


The prisoner of Labyrinth

by Kana_Go



Series: Russian to English translations [11]
Category: Da Vinci's Demons
Genre: Drama, Greek mythology involved, Hurt/Comfort, Italy, M/M, Pseudo-History, Season 3 AU, kinda kinks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-12
Updated: 2019-03-01
Packaged: 2019-08-01 04:56:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 42,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16278227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kana_Go/pseuds/Kana_Go
Summary: The Ottomans are threatening Italian cities, Sixtus is demanding that the mysterious murderer should be found, and Leonardo is trying to save Riario and not to get lost in imagined worlds.





	1. Lo specchio

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [Узник лабиринта](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15512343) by [Kana_Go](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kana_Go/pseuds/Kana_Go). 



> As always, HUUUUGE thanks to meridian-rose for beta-reading!  
> The text got a beautiful illustration by [numinox](https://www.deviantart.com/numinox)  
> https://66.media.tumblr.com/fb91e6f849078793e3596f5ae338cd59/tumblr_poippxAUIK1xrvvczo1_1280.jpg

 

_What is the objective of a labyrinth?_

  
His leg started hurting from hours of running through the maze of narrow streets. However, Leonardo paid no attention to the pain nor the smell of lye and rancid fat in the thick humid air. Limping a bit, he threaded his way between passers-by, feeling like a hound that had got on the scent finally. Only near the door of another bath-house he slowed down, waiting for Riario who’d fallen behind. The count looked like he’d agreed to take part in the search solely out of a sense of duty, and his demeanor demonstrated that it wasn’t appropriate for a person of his status to run about the city like a cat with its tail on fire.

Indeed, Riario – neatly and formally dressed, with his impeccably coiffured hair – looked alien among washerwomen, petty traders and tramps. Leonardo, disheveled and tattered, quite the opposite, fit in with this motley hustle perfectly.

“Are you sure it truly exists?” Riario asked, slightly out of breath. “We’ve visited three bath-houses, but no proprietor has heard of it.”

“It’s rare and expensive,” Leonardo objected.

Riario, who’d already made a couple of steps in the opposite direction, as if intending to leave, approached him again and stared at him with a small incredulous smile.

“I found cardamom particles embedded in Clarice’s lungs,” Leonardo explained again. “She must have inhaled some residue with her dying gasps. They use cardamom only in exotic bath-houses here.”

Without waiting for an answer – which would most likely be another objection – he headed for the door.

“Or we are pursuing a wild goose,” Riario added behind his back.

Leonardo ignored his words and started banging on the door. Something told him their luck would change here. The bath-house shouldn’t have been closed at this hour, but no one answered. Through the small lattice window Leonardo spotted a pool of blood on the floor. He exchanged looks with Riario and the man, to his credit, understood everything without Leonardo saying a word. They pushed their shoulders against the door simultaneously and stumbled into the bath-house, first Leonardo, Riario a little behind.  

It was a little dark and dusty inside. The place smelled like water, spices and a slaughter-house. Rubbing his aching shoulder, Leonardo examined streaks of blood and ran up the steps. The search was short: under the arch, on the marble surface of which shimmers were dancing, a bald man sat cross-legged. Leonardo crouched down next to him and saw a wound in his stomach. The wound was clearly from a knife.  

“No mutilation or desecration,” Riario pointed. “Admit it, he died at a different hand than the cardinal. Robbery, perhaps?”

Looking up from the wound, Leonardo spotted one more interesting detail. There was a medallion on the dead man’s chest – six balls half imbedded into the smooth shield. Brushing the firm cold skin with his finger-tips, he picked up the medallion and displayed it to Riario.

“No looter could miss this glimmer.”

The medallion made it obvious that the bath-house proprietor belonged to the House of Medici whose coat of arms represented the balls – five red ones and a blue one – on yellow. People said that the dynasty owed that coat of arms to their ancestor, Charlemagne's heroic knight, who had used his shield to intercept bravely the attacks of an enemy’s cudgel weighted by iron balls. Truth be told, there was a much more prosaic version according to which the mysterious balls were nothing more than pills the Medici chemists used to sell to make a living. Leonardo favored the latter variant. Solely to annoy Lorenzo.  

“He was employed by the House of Medici,” Leonardo explained. “Clarice definitely was here.”

“This death doesn’t look like art at all.” Leonardo’s words seemingly didn’t do much to convince Riario. “Your ‘artist’ didn’t regret killing him.”

Some vague thought crossed Leonardo’s mind. A sort of weak suspicion. It was here one moment and was gone the next one. His brain was working in full force and beyond, crossing off everything not connected with enigmatic murders. Leonardo shook his head and sprang to his feet.

“Ah,” he brushed off Riario’s remark. “This man was unlucky to get in his way. Just an obstacle.”

Pushing the door aside with an effort and pulling the curtain, Leonardo found himself in a room furnished as an office. There were goblets, candlesticks, a writing set, a beak mask made of waxed leather, and a blood-stained cleaver scattered on the desk. Taking a look at this rather grotesque mixture, Leonardo proceeded farther.

He and Riario saw the owner of the mask – and the blood on the cleaver – simultaneously.

A half-naked man, gagged and bloody, was tied to the chair. The small table next to him was littered with more intimidating instruments.

“Another incidental victim?” Riario commented sarcastically.

Leonardo had to admit that he was right here.  
“Oh no,” Leonardo leaned closer, examining numerous stab wounds and incisions. “Too personal, too brutal. Clarice inflicted them.”

“These are some… exotic entertainments for the Mother of Florence,” Riario observed. “Why murder a Roman physician?” 

He was either overly diplomatic or was mocking Leonardo subtly. Most likely, the latter. Somewhere in the far corner of Leonardo’s mind, in the motley heap marked as ‘Unimportant at the moment’, some suspicion stirred again. Riario was always skeptical or contradicted things on principle, but now Leonardo had the feeling that he was playing for time and derailing the investigation though it had been requested by the pontiff himself. Leonardo turned this thought over in his mind briefly and decided to think it through properly later.  

He was vaguely tempted to retort, like, _it remains to be seen yet what kinds of entertainments your father… sorry, the Holy Father indulges in from outside governing the Roman church_ , but they were acting as allies now, it wasn’t the best moment to exacerbate relations.

“It’s not an entertainment and not just a murder, it’s torture,” he merely explained.

His thoughts were thrashing like wounded birds. Leonardo could feel that he was about to grope for the end of the thread and unravel the whole tangled skein.

“Perhaps… he was in league with Carlo… She was seeking information…”

As it often happened, sudden clarity of a hunch brought tears to his eyes. Leonardo bit his chewed thumbnail.

“I told you! I told you… told you… She would do anything for Florence!”

Without looking at Riario, he rushed to the desk and, strewing sheets of paper, found what he was looking for quickly.  

“’And now I find myself in Rome on a desperate mission to rectify my sins’,” he read aloud and added under his breath, “Poor Clarice… Caught in a web of her own making…”

Because of ecstasy of insight and a sudden wave of the most heartfelt pity, Leonardo didn’t hear the footsteps and jumped when Riario tapped him on the shoulder gently. He swung round, but suddenly his vision darkened, his bad leg buckled, and Leonardo must have fainted for a moment, but didn’t fall. He leaned on the desk heavily and Riario caught him on the other side.

 “When was the last time you ate?” the count asked with a sigh. “Slept? Washed yourself at least?”

Leonardo shook his head in silence. He could give the same answer to all three questions: a lifetime ago.

Riario heaved another sigh.

“Okay. Suppose that physician was in league with Carlo. Suppose Clarice did draw something from him. Or she was killed before she had a chance. You did a great job of figuring all this out, but as you’ve already learnt it’s not your guesswork that Sixtus is seeking. The physician is dead. Clarice is dead. The only prospective witness is dead. We still don’t know where Carlo is, nor our murderer.”

With every short considered phrase Leonardo could feel an increasingly throbbing pain in his head and barely healed wound, hunger-induced nausea coiling in his gut, the reek of sweat and dead flesh coming from his skin and dirty tattered clothes. He did find the end of the thread and rushed out to unravel the skein, but the thread broke at the very beginning.

“And if you do manage to find the murderer you’ll fall into his arms,” Riario concluded slightly derisively. “Just like you’ve done right now. He’ll be extremely pleased.”

“I didn’t fall into your arms,” Leonardo mumbled. He got more upright and pinched the bridge of his nose, waiting out one more dizzy spell, not so bad this time.

“If you say so,” Riario agreed docilely, still holding him by the elbow, though barely touching. “Let us go back to the palace. You need a bath, some food and sleep.”

“I must work,” Leonardo protested hesitantly.

However, the count’s fingers squeezed his arm like those tongs from the table full of torture devices. Riario dragged a weakly resisting Leonardo out to the narrow street bedangled with wet laundry and headed for the palace at a brisk walk.  
***

“I’ve given orders to wash and mend your clothes.” Riario stood at the door without entering the room. “I’m afraid there will be more patches in them than their own fabric, but I dare hope you’ll look less like a victim of war as signora Cereta aptly remarked. Ideally, those rags should’ve been discarded, but…”

“But I seriously doubt that Sixtus will grant me a whole new wardrobe,” Leonardo snorted. “At least not until I find the murderer.”

He had almost fallen asleep in the bath, lulled by the hot scented water, and after he had filled his stomach with thick soup with vegetables and grated cheese he’d found he’d been ready to collapse and fall asleep before getting into the bed. Against his own expectations, he had gotten into the bed. More than that, he had managed to examine the door and the only window for bolts and was going to lock himself in as soon as Riario left him alone.  

“Sleep well,” Riario nodded as if giving a little bow.

“Thank you, count, really…” Leonardo answered sincerely.

“Rome needs you in good running order,” Riario smirked with the corner of his mouth. “Now I must take my leave.”  
When he left the room Leonardo locked the door and the window, flopped on the bed and fell right to sleep even before his head touched the pillows.

  
***  
  
White ribbons were waving in the breeze.  
“You dropped it.”  
“What?” Leonardo responded absentmindedly.

He was trying to catch and slow before his eyes the moment when the translucent white fabric was flowing in air currents in the most impressive fashion. He could almost see those air currents and fought the urge to capture them on paper like he did with tiny waves and little underwater currents. However, it was the portrait which was to become the central part of his drawing. Anyway, he always could take his sketchbook and visit the countryside – the wind wouldn’t go away. 

“As far as I can see from here, you’re looking for the bread,” Vanessa explained with a knowing smile. “So, you dropped it quite a while ago.”

Leonardo spat an oath and checked for his loss under his feet. The piece of soft bread pulp, blackened with charcoal dust, did indeed lie in the grass, and ants had already crawled over it. Leonardo groped for the hunk of bread under his jacket, pinched off another piece, mashed it between his fingers and erased the wrong line.

“Even geniuses slip up occasionally,” Vanessa joked playfully.

“I wish those slips were limited to charcoal and paper…” Leonardo muttered.

All of a sudden the bright spring day seemed to darken. Leonardo narrowed his eyes: no, grass and foliage remained verdant, the sky delighted the eye with its blue color, and the sun was still shining. Even the city walls and roofs, veiled with thin gauze, made him think of amber and honey.

Perhaps, he’d just slipped out of the mood.  
Vanessa smiled softly and a smidge mischievously. The nun just out of the convent who’d flitted out from behind the high walls like a bird out of its cage: gorgeous reddish hair braided in dozens of thin ribboned plaits, narrow white shoulders, small pointed breasts. Leonardo looked down at his drawing to compare the model and the portrait. The charcoal sketch presented a young woman who held a child to her bosom. One could still distinguish Vanessa’s traits unmistakably, but she seemed slightly older, fuller figured, and besides, she could boast of a fancy dress and intricate hair-style. She could be a notable nobleman’s mistress or wife. The haunted look in her eyes was the only detail which ran counter to general satiety and pomposity of her person. Leonardo had painted more than one Madonna and his customers had carped about uncustomary expressions and postures now and then. But something like that…

“Leo!”

A sudden throb of pain shot through his eyes. Leonardo shook his head and stared at Vanessa indignantly. She giggled, catching another sunbeam with a pocket mirror.

“Are you trying to make me blind, you naughty girl?” Leonardo covered his eyes with his elbow. “How will I draw then?”

“But you did teach yourself to draw with your right hand,” Vanessa pointed out carelessly. “Open the third eye, perhaps?”  
“My, if only Reverend Mother could hear you!” Leonardo chided her in a venomous voice. “No! Stop! Stop it! Give me that mirror right now!”

“Then catch me and take it yourself!” Vanessa sprang to her feet and straightened her dress. “If you catch me I’ll let you kiss me!”

With that she broke into a run.

Though still baffled, Leonardo bolted after her reflexively like a hound. Vanessa, dancing a bit, was whirling with a ringing laughter. Deer which were grazing nearby cast up their delicately shaped heads and darted off, too. The sun was scattering its beams, the ribbons were dancing in the wind. Leonardo quickly caught her up, screaming with delight and feigned fear, but as soon as he reached out his boot bumped against a molehill and he collapsed in the grass face first. The fall knocked the air out of his lungs, but Leonardo wasn’t hurt. Still, he wasn’t in a hurry to get up, believing fairly that Vanessa would be alarmed and come running up to him on her own accord. And it wasn’t certain who would kiss whom.  
In the next moment someone gave his shoulder a hefty shake.  
“Kiss me, my princess, and then I may come back to life,” Leonardo murmured.

“What the fuck, Leo???”

***

  
“So you decided to return my love finally, my prince charming?” Zo teased, grabbing his arm and pulling him up. “It’s flattering. But the time is wrong.”

“Zo?!” Leonardo sat up with a jerk. “What are you doing here?”

“I was just going to ask you the same question. What the hell are you doing here?”

“Here?” Leonardo looked around. “Where’re we? Wait, this is… the cave?”  
They sat next to the entrance to the very cave the images of which had been etched in his memory since childhood and haunting him through his whole life. Leonardo had entered it again and again, chasing a sheep which had broken from the herd, but then he had emerged alone, soaked and shivering, stained with blood and with his head totally empty.

“But Vanessa… No,” Leonardo rubbed his forehead. “I should’ve realized it’s a dream. Riario!”

“What about Riario?” Zo asked with a jealous wife’s intonations.

While talking, he had managed to haul Leonardo to his feet and now half-led, half-dragged, him away from the cave. Stunned by his dream, Leonardo didn’t even try to watch the way.

“I was with him! We…”

“I beg you, don’t give me details of your wet dreams,” Zo rolled his eyes and spat on the path loudly. “Especially if they involve that Roman prude. You’re even pervier than I thought.”

“Not at all! What are you talking about?” Leonardo broke free and grabbed Zo’s shoulders. “Don’t you remember? We went to ask for money from Sixtus to build new weapons against the Ottomans. You left me at the gates. Sixtus agreed to give money only in the event that I found the murderer loose in the city. I found the particles of a cardamom seed in Clarice’s lungs, Riario and I, we searched the bathhouse, found two more bodies and a letter. But then I nearly fainted from exhaustion and Riario insisted on returning to the palace. I had a meal and went to bed and… and… and…”

Leonardo choked on the words and took a deep breath.

“Stop talking a blue streak,” Zo frowned, squeezed his wrists and removed his hands from his jacket. “Your head is even messier than your working table. Did you smoke with your Turkish buddy again?”

“He’s not my buddy. He gave my designs to the Ottomans, they built weapons and captured Otranto,” Leonardo uttered without much certainty.

“Yeah, the mess on your working table isn’t even close,” Zo sighed. “Are you sure you didn’t smoke? Didn’t eat any unfamiliar mushrooms?”

Through the olive grove they went out to a stone farmhouse. The building was low and long, with little windows. Leonardo gave it a look, then turned to admire a view over the town which lay a bit more than a mile from the house and the hills on the horizon, pink with the evening glow.

“Leeeeo,” Zo used a strand of his hair as reins to make him look towards the stone building. “Just don’t tell me you cannot recognize your own house. Do you remember me at least?”

“We’re in Vinci,” Leonardo muttered.

It was as though the scales fell from his eyes. On the other hand, he had never returned to visit the place of his birth since his father had moved to Florence, so the house and the nearby town were, in a way, new to him.

“Let’s grab something to eat and drink,” Zo beckoned him inside. “You’ve been wandering who knows where for almost three days. You must be starving.”

The rooms still spoke of desolation, but webs and dust were more or less cleaned down, the most decayed furniture had been broken for firewood. Zo pointed towards the table on which amongst paper and vials there was a pitcher, a loaf of bread and a block of cheese.

“I’m not hungry,” Leonardo said hesitatingly, trying to call up the taste of the soup. “Probably.”

“’Probably’ means you _are_ hungry,” Zo retorted. “Or you caught and ate someone in that cave of yours?”

Leonardo brushed him off and nipped off a little piece of the dryish cheese. As soon as first crumbs fell on his tongue he realized he was literally dying of hunger so he started to chew and swallow furiously, breaking off big chunks. Zo sighed and moved the pitcher closer to him. The wine was diluted, tasted slightly sour and might have become the final resting place of a few flies, but Leonardo inhaled half a pitcher in one go. It turned out he was no less thirsty than he was hungry.

“Let’s do it this way,” Zo suggested after Leonardo ate his fill and continued to nip off small pieces more out of greed. “You’ll tell me what you remember and I’ll tell you what I remember. Something should be in common.”

“I’ve already told you what I remember,” Leonardo objected. “Do you remember something different?”

“Let’s start with the fact that we have no need to bow to Sixtus,” Zo shrugged. “Thank all the saints that the Ottomans keep quiet and don’t try to entrench upon our lands.”

“So… Otranto didn’t fall?” Leonardo asked mistrustfully.

He felt his thigh, but found neither bandages nor a scar. Speaking of which, his clothes were the same – trousers and his favorite worn shirt, everything pretty dirty and shabby, but not torn.

“It stands so far,” Zo nodded seriously.

“Wait… Clarice, Lorenzo, Andrea… father? Are they all alive? And mother…”

Relief flooded him like a gigantic wave as if after a particularly vivid nightmare. Even his vision blurred a bit. Leonardo rubbed his flushed face, then locked eyes with Zo and went cold.

“No?”

Zo looked at him sympathetically and shook his head.

“We came back from the edge of the world and found out that Duke Urbino’s people had captured the city. You remember this, don’t you?”

“Yes, sure. But I… I dropped a ball with sleep powder to the hall while you and Amerigo were fighting to the merriment of soldiers, everyone fell asleep, I fought Duke Urbino and won, and then Clarice poked his eye out with a sword…”

“It all happened almost like you said,” Zo interrupted. “But he was killed by you because Clarice had been dead even before we reached the city. This scumbag had a good time with her. You wouldn't wish something like that on your worst enemy…”

“Dammit,” Leonardo ran his fingers through his hair. “In my… visions she died instantly at least.”

“Amidst street riots and general confusion your father was killed,” Zo continued flatly. “Some rough must’ve just casually stubbed him with his sword.”

“What a senseless death,” Leonardo muttered.

Zo gave him an odd look, and Leonardo perfectly understood how weird it had sounded, but in his memories father had literally saved their lives, holding soldiers off, after which he hadn’t yielded himself to the invaders’ mercy and died a hero. Leonardo tried to seek solace in that and realized he’d succeeded only now when it turned out that the man had fallen an incidental victim.

“As for your mother, I know about her even less than you do. Which is to say, a bit less than nothing. Why did you suddenly bring her up?”

Leonardo shrugged noncommittally.

“On a side note, Lorenzo is alive though I got the impression that he regretted it. He safely returned from Naples…”

“You mean father didn’t accompany him?” Leonardo interrupted.

“No, why would he? Lorenzo entered into a truce with that old perv Ferdinand, I dare not think what it's cost him, and came back in triumph. Only to face the news,” Zo grimaced. “Now he doesn’t even want to see you.”

“But I saved Florence,” Leonardo protested in surprise.

“But you didn’t save his wife.” Zo raised his hand. “No, don’t try to look for any logic here I beg you. I tell you he’s not himself after Naples. If we’re lucky he’ll recuperate and come to his senses. Till then, it may be better to stay out of his sight.”

“Is that why we came here in the first place?” Leonardo queried.

The whole picture began to build up in his head finally – barely familiar, but more or less comprehensive.

“In some degree. Clarice’s death, losing your father and Lorenzo’s disfavor already laid you low, so when Carlo killed Verrocchio…”

“Thank Heaven,” Leonardo breathed out.

Zo choked and stared at him like a stuck pig.

“Leo? You’re scaring me, mate.”  
“No, no, no, you got it wrong,” Leonardo shook his head. “It’s not Andrea’s death I’m happy about, it’s just that there’s at least one thing we remember in the same way.”

“Oh yeah,” Zo calmed down a bit. “Your studio was on fire. Verrocchio was dead of a stomach wound when they got him out, and you were almost intact though you’d inhaled plenty of smoke. Still, as soon as you got to your horse you gave chase to Carlo. Apparently you didn’t catch him though. Anyway, I found you in the woods not so far from the city. You tried to crawl to Constantinople, quite literally it seemed to me. All told, Nico, Vanessa and I decided that you should have some rest away from Florence.”

Leonardo groped for a stub of a charcoal pencil and was doodling idly on the edge of the notebook page covered with writing. His exercises resulted in dark curly tongues of fire similar to blood and intricate trickles of blood similar to tongues of fire. Then the whorls turned into antlers, and he remembered his dream about a sunlit meadow and Vanessa. This dream was almost the same as the reality. The only thing was, Nico hadn’t appeared, nor there been any mirror.

“You sat quietly for a week,” Zo continued, “at least as quietly as you possibly can, but three days ago you disappeared. I searched Vinci and the surrounding hills high and low, mobilized Nico and Vanessa in Florence and, to tell you the truth, I considered waiting to hear from you from Constantinople. But here I’m passing this damned cave – and looka yonder! Our genius taking a nap on the grass. Where’ve you been all this time, jackass?”  
“Thank you, Zo,” Leonardo put the pencil aside. “You've done so much for me.”

“Hmm,” Zo narrowed his eyes even though he looked flattered. “I’m not sure anymore it’s you I found. Are you really you?”

“And Riario?” Leonardo started.

“There you go, and I almost decided I love you,” Zo heaved a sigh. “What about Riario? I reckon he came back to Rome like a beaten dog. We haven’t seen him since. People say some murderer showed up there and stabbed a cardinal almost under Sixtus’ nose. Let them have fun and leave us alone.”

“I must find him,” Leonardo stood up. “I think he got wrapped up in something awful.”

“He got wrapped up in something awful when he stuck his nose out of the monastery and started serving his uncle, for God's sake.” Zo wasn’t impressed at all. “He’s not a stranger to this.”

“No,” Leonardo shook his head. “I’m going to Rome.”

“Aaaargh, I’m going with you,” Zo sighed. “But do we have to rush there when it's nearly dark?”

Leonardo realized that it was growing dusk outside and the room was almost plunged into darkness. Zo lit up a fire in the hearth and started to light lamps. Threadbare skins by the fire suddenly beckoned him with irresistible force, and Leonardo understood that he felt as sleepy as he’d been thirsty and hungry a short time before. He had one more sip of wine and with a huge yawn stretched himself out in front of the hearth.

“In case you haven't noticed, there’s a bed here,” Zo called.  

“You can take it,” Leonardo muttered, squinting at the sparks.

“Your generosity knows no boundaries. You probably should disappear more often…”

Perhaps he kept talking, but Leonardo was already asleep.   
***   
  
Somewhere water was prattling, shouts and rhythmical drumbeats could be heard in the distance. For a moment Leonardo thought he was being held captive by Children of the Sun again, but then all the sounds were gone and he realized it was a totally different place. The air felt very dry, cool and still. Out of a small round hole in the low ceiling soft white light was flowing and particles of dust were dancing in it. Leonardo stood in the resulting spot of light and impenetrable shadows surrounded him from all sides. Raising his head, he squinted, but could see neither the sky nor a source of the light. The floor under his feet was stone and smooth as if polished. Deep in contemplation if he should try and feel around or better get to the hole somehow and peep out, Leonardo flinched when a long sigh sounded very close to him. This one didn’t really sound like it was uttered by a human being – it was rather how horses did it, but Leonardo still called, “Hello? Who’s here?”

Light came on from everywhere at once, the darkness was shattered and he had a sudden burning feeling in his eyes as if in the result of a failed experiment with an explosive mixture. Leonardo covered his face with his hands and only a few long moments later he dared first peep through his fingers and then remove his palms. He stood in the middle of a round hall on the walls of which torches were burning. In fact, the light seemed bright only compared to the recent full darkness, but his eyes kept aching though sharp pain had passed. Blinking rapidly, Leonardo looked at the hole in the ceiling again, then looked down and staggered back.  

He wasn’t alone in the hall. Literally two steps away from him, with its face hidden between its knees, there sat a… creature. Actually, it appeared human, but much more it resembled one of those chimeras which could be found in his notebook among sketches of plants, domestic animals and peculiar faces he’d spotted in the streets and squares. Not daring to approach, Leonardo made several steps around and came to a stand at its side and a bit behind. At first the creature showed no sign of acknowledging his presence, only its ribs heaved, letting out another long loud sigh under the hall vaults, but then, slowly and without looking back, it raised its head. It was harder than he could imagine to take his eyes off the curved anthracite black horns, but Leonardo made this effort and froze. Being an artist, he was good at remembering not only faces. Especially since hiding a face was always easier. But a posture, a stature or a gait was a little harder to change. Leonardo saw and with incredulous surprise recognized a bit stooped – if you looked from the side – back, squared shoulders and a bowed head. 

“Count?” he breathed out.

Riario glanced at him over his shoulder.

“Artista.”

Leonardo couldn’t find the words for a moment and Riario half-asked half-stated, “You’re alive.”

“And you’re my dream.” Finding his tongue finally, Leonardo circled Riario and stopped in front of him. “Although I should admit I didn’t expect anything like that even from my own imagination.”

 Riario didn’t have a single scrap of clothing on him, however, being completely covered with short fur, gray with silver sheen, he didn’t look naked, but rather extremely shorthaired like a Corso dog or a Chianina bull. The same fine short fur covered his face which became almost unrecognizable without a moustache, a beard, eyebrows and bangs falling in his eyes. Speaking of which, his eyes, lacking whites and as if coated in ink, didn’t help to make his look familiar, either.

There was a prolonged silence.

“You have really long eyelashes like a cow,” Leonardo observed finally.

“Do you think so? Somehow I thought my eyes were located up here.”

Apparently, Riario’s accustomed dry humor remained unchanged.

“Sorry,” Leonardo felt slightly abashed and looked up. “I think I’m looking for a tail.”

“A tail?” Riario cocked his head to the side. “Is it an innuendo?”

“No,” Leonardo made a vague gesture. “You have bull horns, consequently you should have a tail.”

Riario nodded knowingly.

“And hooves,” he added. “And presumably a nose ring.”  
Neither of them laughed or even smiled, but the atmosphere became less tense. Leonardo doubled up his legs and got down on the floor. He felt as if he came back to the sodden caves of freshly discovered Vespuccia, and in the back of his mind drums started thundering again. He shook his head to get rid of the illusion.

“Where are we?”

“That’s not the question,” Riario gazed at him fixedly, but his black eyes completely lacked expression. “The question is _who_ we are.”

Leonardo arched his eyebrows expectantly.  
“We are only shadows at the center of the Labyrinth,” Riario intoned slowly. “We are people, not gods.”

The flame of the torches shot upwards and Leonardo had to close his eyes again. When the blinding light faded he expected to find himself alone, but Riario still sat opposite and stared at him. Wiping tears brought to his eyes by the blaze, Leonardo noticed that something had changed after all: multiple narrow doors had appeared in the walls of the hall.

“I should’ve known,” he concluded with resignation. “What did you get yourself into, Girolamo?”

Riario spread his hands in silence and Leonardo frowned, spotting barely healed cuts on his wrists.

“What are these?”

“And one shall say unto him, What are these wounds in thine hands? Then he shall answer, Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends.”

“What do you mean? Someone did it to you? Sixtus? You don't really need to talk in riddles, you know?”

Even though he understood that this was a dream which meant his time was limited only by waking, Leonardo started to lose his patience little by little. He had read a story about a sage who had lived a life within a few moments of his sleep, but he wasn’t willing to recreate this experience.

“I committed this myself for I was weak,” Riario explained reluctantly. “But we’d better talk about you. Now tell me, Leonardo, what is the objective of a labyrinth?”

“And what do you think?”

Idle sitting became unbearable. Leonardo bolted to his feet, removed a torch from the wall and, choosing the door to the right of the sconce, looked in cautiously.

“To solve it and reach the center.”

“But we’ve kinda already done it…” Leonardo rejoined distractedly.

As soon as he stepped into the corridor the torch went out immediately, however, the fire flared up as rapidly the moment he made a step back to the hall. As the result, only several cubits of the walls and the floor were lit.  
“It’s my dream and therefore there has to be some sort of logic in it,” Leonardo complained aloud. “Where flame doesn’t live no breathing creature is able to. I have no breathing problems, even the slightest. So how come the fire does go out?”

He repeated that useless maneuver a few times and looked back. Riario watched him with impassive interest, his head turned at an angle which would be impossible for a living person. Leonardo shivered. He turned to the doorway hastily and almost recoiled: at the fluid border between failing torch light and translucent semidarkness a crucified body belonging to a middle-aged man was hanging from the ceiling – stripped, bloody, with its lips sewn shut and its sternum open. Recovering from surprise, Leonardo took a closer look and a new shock followed.

“But it’s Cardinal Rodrigo! You and I investigated his death in… in… in my earlier dream? But Zo mentioned a murder at the Vatican,” he shook his head and put the torch back into the sconce. “I don’t get it. What is a cardinal from Rome doing here?”

“Perhaps, he never reached the center of the Labyrinth?” Riario surmised behind him.

“Or he tried to prevent someone from doing it,” Leonardo murmured. “Or… What kind of maze is that? Am I really sleeping?”

He removed the torch again, put it onto the floor, reasonably believing that with all that stone around the fire wasn’t really a threat, and started taking different torches out of their sconces and trying the other doors. The torches kept going out, but in each corridor the light falling from the doorway revealed only emptiness.

“One sage had a dream about a butterfly which dreamt that it was a sage,” Riario said. “So when this sage woke up he couldn’t understand if he’d dreamt of that butterfly or he himself was just its dream.”

“So where did the man end up?” Leonardo inquired without turning, looking into another half-dark corridor.

“I have absolutely no idea. Probably in a cell for lunatics.”

“You’re cheerful as usual,” Leonardo placed back another torch and tousled his hair. “Okay, it’s no use. I need to wake up.”

He approached the center of the hall and looked at the hole in the ceiling. It was too small for an adult man to squeeze through.

“You’ll become one with us,” Riario said.

Leonardo sighed and crouched in front of him.

“You know, count, I’m not sure yet what exactly you got stuck in and how deep, but I’m going to save you.”

Riario looked at him and Leonardo thought that those cold black eyes warmed up a bit. The pale lips stretched in a smile, but hardly had Leonardo given him an encouraging smile of his own than a long triangular tongue lolled out of Riario’s mouth followed by the flow of dark blood. Leonardo staggered back – either with fear or with disgust – lost his balance and…  
***   
  
And then he woke up. The wood in the hearth had burnt to ashes and was barely smoldering. The light gray sky in the window started to change into morning azure. Flies buzzed sluggishly above the pitcher. Zo snored in the corner, spread-eagled on the bed which he had all to himself.

Leonardo sat up and rubbed his eyes, shaking off a confusing dream. He strolled around the room to stretch his stiff leg, chewed a little piece of bread. Then, feeling that he couldn't stand another second of waiting, he gave Zo a jab in the back. Zo sighed, opened one eye, darted an indignant glance at him and uttered a long flowery curse which characterized the certain artist’s ancestry not in the most flattering light.

“Sleep resembles death,” Leonardo commented pedantically, enforcing his admonition with another stronger jab. “Which means that lazybones die prematurely and repeatedly.”

“If you roust me out of bed at this hour again,” Zo grumbled, disentangling himself from the covers, “then you’ll definitely die prematurely, even if once.”

Leonardo laughed.

“Find horses,” he ordered. “We’ll depart now before it gets too hot.”

“Find,” Zo imitated. He hobbled to the table, peered into the pitcher and made a wry face. “What else should I find for you?”

“Actually I could use some decent wine and breakfast.”

“Shut up and eat leftovers,” followed a generous offer. “I’m not your personal cook.”

Leonardo shook his head with a smile.

“You know I’m really happy that in reality I never left you at the Vatican gates.”

Zo snorted and smacked him on the back.

“Never is a long word. If you’re going to follow your dear count around the palace to make sure that the poor little boy hasn’t fallen into bad associations, I’m not setting foot in there.”

“Sure thing, I’m not. I… well, I can hire myself to someone living nearby to paint something so that my visit doesn’t look suspicious? Zo, do you know anyone in Rome…”

“I’m already outside and cannot hear a thing!”

Zo dashed out the door, but Leonardo could still hear him complaining loudly in the yard. “Zo, do you know anyone… Zo, find… Zo, go and fetch…” But the complaints lacked seriousness and Leonardo, smiling again, started packing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lo specchio - the mirror


	2. Il gomitolo

“We are the horns of the increate, we are the shadows at the center of the Labyrinth, but we are men, not gods, we are one.” 

The pain which shot through his eyes was so severe he felt as if someone pierced his eye sockets with two red-hot pokers. His head was about to burst like an overripe pomegranate, belts compressed his chest, his thigh ached and throbbed, but this pain was nothing compared with the one that seemed to reach his very brain.

“How many of us occupy this chamber? How many of us occupy this chamber?”   
Someone whom he couldn’t see kept repeating the same phrases again and again: one moment it was just a quiet rapid sequence of words, and then the man raised his voice and almost shouted. Leonardo didn’t understand where he was and what they wanted from him: the pain flooded his mind like a swollen river.

“We are only the shadows at the center of the Labyrinth, we are men, not gods, we are only the shadows at the center of the Labyrinth, we are men, not gods, we are one. How many of us occupy this chamber?”

Leonardo screamed again.    
***  


He sat up and dashed away a thin dribble of saliva leaking out of the corner of his mouth, then massaged his eyelids above his aching eyes, rubbed his cheeks. The knot pattern from the table left marks on his cheekbone. Zo looked at his face anxiously, with concern which seemed only half-feigned.

“Please tell me you remember where we are and what my name is.”

“Stop fussing,” Leonardo winced. “Good old nightmare, nothing serious.”

“Glad to hear that.” Zo grimaced and thrust his finger over his shoulder. “You have a visitor. He’s in the loggia.”    
Leonardo jumped out of his seat readily. The expression like that appeared on Zo’s face in two cases: when he didn’t manage to get a drink ‘from the Roman treasury’ (for which read, on trust) or when he had to communicate with Riario.

At Leonardo’s insistence they had driven their horses at a breakneck pace and covered the distance between Vinci and Rome as quickly as possible, but it turned out there been no need to move in such a hurry. Riario had left for Nettuno and been gone for a few days now. Zo had found some acquaintances of his, they had asked around and found some acquaintances of theirs, and so on, and thus, along this chain, the message about Leonardo’s arrival had reached the ears of a man who came from a local aristocratic family and resided in Via di Corte Savella.

The man, not afraid of the Florentine artist’s mercurial reputation, had spared no expense for commissions, ordering a detailed draft of Adam and Eve for a tapestry and a portrait of his niece. In exchange, besides an honorarium, he’d provided accommodation for Leonardo and Zo – a little room in the back of the house and a spacious loggia. This loggia had been chosen as a studio by Leonardo right away – both a big sketch and an easel with the portrait fit in there perfectly. He’d given orders to cover the windows with oil-soaked paper, that’s why even on the sunniest of the days the light remained soft and diffused, best for work.

Leonardo stood at the doorway quietly for some time, watching Riario wander around the loggia and examine the tapestry draft, the paints and the small table with dinnerware (the commissioner’s niece, donna Luigia, posed for her portrait with a gorgeous gilded silver pitcher, and Zo kept squinting at it with suspicious interest). Leonardo felt slightly anxious looking at Riario. The count had come to him in rather distressing visions before, and intellectually Leonardo was aware that all those transformations took place solely in his overactive imagination, but looking at the man still made him feel a little uncomfortable.

Finally, when Riario stopped again in front of the sketch in which sorrowful Adam and Eve were leaving the Garden of Eden, Leonardo approached and cleared his throat.

“A grain of evil seed was sown in the heart of Adam from the beginning, and how much godlessness it has produced until now and will produce until the time for threshing comes,” Riario said softly. “Calculate for yourself how much godless fruit the grain of evil seed will have produced. When the innumerable ears of grain are sown, how great a threshing floor will they begin to make.”

“So when will these things be?” Leonardo chimed in easily.

“Don’t be in a greater hurry than the Most High.” Riario turned to him and nodded. “Artista.”

“Count.” Leonardo mimicked his gesture. “You’re back.”

“You’re alive.”

 They had already repeated these phrases not even once, but twice. At first Leonardo wondered why Riario had commented on the fact he was alive if the battle of Otranto hadn’t happened in reality. However, he realized almost immediately that Riario meant the disorders carried out by Duke Urbino’s people.

The count looked the same as at the Vatican’s door in the past which no one but Leonardo remembered – impeccably dressed, well-groomed, self-confident, nothing like that dead-tired suffering man whom Zo, Nico and he had carried through the jungles to the ocean. 

“I heard you were in town, so I decided to pay a visit,” Riario explained. “It’s a nice place. Did your friend choose it to suit his own taste?”

Zo’s curse was muffled by the wall. Via di Corte Savella had been housing courts and prisons since olden times, and a not-so-flattering allusion was more than clear. Leonardo smiled politely.

Riario paid attention to the portrait again. Strange dreams drew Leonardo’s thoughts from dozens of adventitious activities which he gave himself up to at his both leisure and busy hours, so he managed to concentrate exclusively on the commissions and had made good progress.    
“Interesting,” Riario observed. “There’re far more colors in the painting than paints here.”

“When one translucent paint is laid upon another we get the third one which is different from the previous two,” Leonardo commentated with alacrity. “Thus, purple over blue pigment gives a violet color, and blue over yellow gives green. Some paints, however, shouldn’t be mixed with others, verdigris for example, but in general the variety of hues is vast… Anyway, it’s not something that will interest you, but look at this.”   
He grabbed his notebook and flipped through the pages with lightning speed. The drawings sketched close to the page edges changed from one to another rapidly, in this fashion displaying the story: two stick figures – still recognizable – were dragging the third one on a stretcher, continually dropping it face first on the ground. Riario got hold of the notebook and played the whole spectacle a couple more times, shaking his head in amazement.

“You’re a sorcerer, artista,” he commented admiringly. “May I ask who’s the author of the idea?”    
Behind the wall Zo burst out laughing. Riario cast a meaningful look toward the sound, smirked with the corner of his lips and, without asking for permission, started to peruse the other pages. Leonardo let him do this: Riario, unlike the superstitious court members, wouldn’t be intimidated by strange images. Anyway, he looked through the sketches of his horned double (Leonardo hadn’t elaborated his features, just in case) rather impassively. But merchants’ and beggars’ heads amused him again.   

“It isn’t possible.” He ran his finger over the head of a fat man whose face looked a lot like a toad’s snout. “You sketch them in the streets, don’t you? I don’t believe that. You cannot see such ugly creatures even in the king of Naples’s collection.”

“Does it look bad?” Leonardo chose not to go into the details of his experiments with distorting mirrors.

“Well, unattractive,” Riario replied evasively.

“Not all that’s beautiful is good,” Leonardo shrugged. “And vice versa.”

It struck him that his opponent could think that the comment was directed at him. After all, scarcely anyone would take the liberty of calling the count a good person. Except for poor Zita… However, many could call him handsome and Leonardo would readily fall into line with them.

No one knew what turn Riario’s thoughts took, but his interest in the notebook dissipated a little.

“You got a good commission,” he said more coldly. “And still you keep disporting yourself at queer doodles.”

“If a painter executes only commissioned works he won’t learn new things,” Leonardo countered. “More than that, he’ll spoil the things he’s already learnt.”

“And if he’s distracted by trivia too much he won’t be paid,” Riario snorted.

“Greed for silver is the root of all evil,” Leonardo didn’t give in, just out of defiance.

“Very true, hell with silver when you can take gold.” Zo appeared in the loggia. “I could listen to your philosophical debates ‘til doomsday, but you know, count, I don’t believe that you’ve brought your highly distinguished arse here only to discuss art with Leo.”

“I was getting to it,” Leonardo edged in quickly.

“Yeah, at this pace you’ll be there in just a year or two.”

Riario heaved a sigh.

“I wanted to ask for advice,” he confessed. “You have an incisive mind, artista, though you are not always able to make good use of it.”

“Wow, you’re a brilliant master of compliments.” Zo folded his arms. “Now I see why fair ladies flock to you like geese.”

Riario pursed his lips.

“One more word from you, and my dagger will shorten the thing which makes fair ladies flock to _you_ like geese.”

Leonardo exploded with laughter. Zo narrowed his eyes with feigned suspicion.

“I recall our meeting on the Tiber bank and I’m starting to think you’ve got a weird thing for some specific parts of my body.”   
“I was talking about your tongue,” Riario clarified with a straight face. “And what was your guess?”

“That’s enough quarreling.” Leonardo stopped laughing, seized Riario under his arm and pulled him to the yard. “Were you going to ask for advice?”   
He had to school his expression for fear of showing his surprise when Riario started to tell him about the gruesome murder of Cardinal Rodrigo of Venice. Leonardo knew all of this perfectly. Riario was describing mutilations and developing the theories about His Holiness’ perfidious brother’s involvement in the murder since the aforementioned brother had escaped from his cell in the Castle of the Holy Angel recently. Leonardo listened to him inattentively. And not only because he was aware of the true story with the ‘perfidious brother’ and could see that Riario himself didn’t believe in this assumption.

He was thinking about his dreams and the Time River. The story repeated itself. Was it a prophetic dream or did the Time River’s current go on a loop, over the first circle, like a layer of warm air went over a cold one? Perhaps, he, Leonardo, had committed a horrendous mistake and mysterious higher forces had given him the chance to prevent it? On the other hand, he considered his horrendous mistake the weapons whose designs could be read and brought to life by anyone who would take the trouble. However, Al-Rahim hadn’t given his designs to the Ottomans and they hadn’t built bombs, cannons and tanks, nor had they captured cities and killed people. So what exactly was he supposed to prevent?

Leonardo found himself thinking that he wouldn’t mind a visit from the Turk – the man definitely felt more confident in the Time River’s turbid waters – but the Turk came only when he felt like it. But… what if it wasn’t he who’d committed that mistake? What if Riario had gotten himself into something so destructive that some sort of disaster would happen if Leonardo didn’t stop him? In the visions he’d had in the caves of the Stone City, caused by snake venom and the brew made of the rope of the dead, his dying double had warned him about the Enemies of Man, the Labyrinth, who should’ve never got their claws into the Book of Leaves. It looked like in his recent dream he’d found himself in a sort of the Labyrinth from Greek myths and interestingly enough, Riario had appeared to him as the Minotaur. If they had really obtained the Book it would be possible to assume that Riario intended to steal it and hand it over to the Labyrinth. However, the Book hadn’t been at the end of the world. Moreover, probably it had never existed in the first place. Leonardo didn’t know what to think anymore. And still, he decided to go all the way – whatever it was – one more time to see what came next. After all, he did everything only because he wanted to know what was next. They all wanted that. 

“…artista?” Riario touched his shoulder. “Did you hear what I was talking about?”

“Yes, of course,” Leonardo lied calmly. “Since I’m here I’ll willingly help you with the investigation.”  
***  
  
The sunset had burnt out, only a wide rapidly fading pink strip could be seen over the roofs. The streets were lit by flaming torches. The wind turned cool and fresh, but flames and numerous excited bodies brought some heat. In the evening air the smells of fume and flowers, sweat and perfume, frankincense and soiled water were mixed. On the square in front of the Duomo a bright crowd was dancing – straw mixed with sand flew from under feet of all sorts and sizes: it was an endless motley procession of jokers, fauns, dryads, jugglers and fire breathers. Leonardo groped for the notebook on his belt reflexively, but didn’t even try to open it: the picture before his eyes kept changing quickly and unpredictably like a pattern made of shards of stained glass. As soon as he spotted Zo, who wore a loose white shirt and vine branches, the dressed up dancers dispersed like a swarm of butterflies scared up by a careless foot. In the resulting passage appeared a decorous procession which was followed by a painted carriage. The carriage was pulled by a pair of white oxen adorned with spring grass and flowers.  

Zo, who came to stand next to him, was talking something about the notable Pazzi family and their eminent ancestor, but Leonardo could barely hear him. Perhaps he looked calm outwardly, but in fact he was so anxious he felt a bit queasy. Not only the prosperity of Florence depended on the successful outcome of the dove’s flight this year – if he managed to make a good impression on the Magnificent… Lorenzo accepted the sacred fire from the Pazzi’s hands and disappeared into the bowels of the cathedral for a short while. All present seemed to simultaneously forget how to breathe.   
When the dove was doing pirouettes in the dark sky with the crowd cheering and the bells of the Giotto's Campanile ringing before the carriage exploded with exuberant fireworks, Leonardo’s eyes locked on the eyes under a red and gold mask, full of interest and desire, and he realized he’d won even more than he’d intended this evening. A phoenix painted between the chiseled shoulder-blades got lost in the crowd and Leonardo bolted after the woman.

Lucrezia Donati proved to be a fire – mesmerizing, scorching, all-devouring. Leonardo burnt in her flame again and again and when he thought there was nothing left but soft ash embers flared up again. Or maybe those were more festive fireworks flashing in the night sky.     
Weary of passion, he succumbed to slumber – just for a little while: the citizens continued to make merry loudly outside the window. Leonardo’s mouth was dry and he groped for a ripe pomegranate on the plate on the shelf at the head of the bed. The other half of the bed was empty. He pulled himself up, slightly worried, looked around the room and choked on a little cry. The pomegranate slipped out of his fingers and fell softly on the tangled sheets.   
Lucrezia, fully dressed, was lying spread-eagled on the floor like a huge scarlet bird plunged from the sky. Leonardo extricated himself from the sheets and rushed to her. In the glimmer of candlelight he saw too much red: her dress, her mask, the artificial locks in her hair swept by falling; drops of blood resembled pomegranate seeds scattered all over the floor, and this blood – not cinnabar which had been long rubbed off by kisses – was the reason Lucrezia’s lips looked flushed on her pallid face.   
“Lucrezia!” He started feeling her clay-cold body with his trembling hands, trying to find a wound.

“Leonardo.” Lucrezia caught his hand and squeezed it weakly. “Don’t cry. It’s over.”

“What’s over?” Leonardo suddenly realized that tears were flowing down his cheeks. “Someone’s been in here? What’s happened?”

“You’re free now.”

“I… I _am_ free.” He stopped bustling and pressed her languid hand to his lips. “I’m always free. I don’t understand you. What are you talking about? Where are you injured?”

Leonardo removed her mask, looked into her face and barely recognized it. Lucrezia’s face was no longer a face of a noble lady who knew her own value and had treated herself to a short-lived affair. Leonardo could see neither coquetry nor cunning nor faux frivolity. In her pale wet eyes he saw desperate love, pain, resignation, forgiveness and oh so many other feelings, development of which would require a few months if not years of complicated relationship rather than a couple of hours of non-committal mutual pleasure.

“Lucrezia,” he repeated, pining with befuddlement and inexplicable yearning.

“Take it.” With her free hand she put something small and round in his palm. “You must survive. You must escape.”

Her hand fell lifelessly and Leonardo closed his fingers around her gift just in time. Lucrezia’s fixed stare was now directed upward, not even at the ceiling, but beyond it, at the invisible sky, and it became clear to Leonardo that the phoenix would never raise out of the ashes again.

He found a ball of yarn in his hand and its thread was incarnadine, too.    
***  
  
Leonardo woke up in tears.

It had been a long time since he’d seen Lucrezia: considering she’d become the Ottomans’ envoy only in his visions it turned out that they had met with each other even before his journey to the end of the world. Leonardo had no idea where she was and if she was alright. He tried to convince himself that he didn’t care at all, but his own arguments sounded weak.

“You’re crying, artista. A bad dream?”

Leonardo flinched and wiped his wet face testily. He was sitting on a little sofa and Riario, settling himself in an armchair across the room, was looking at him with polite interest. People usually sported such an expression when to their question ‘How are you?’ you really started to explain how you were doing.  

Zo had given an “I told you!” when Leonardo had revealed his intention to help Riario, but he hadn’t made a big deal out of this. All day long Leonardo had been running around the palace and the garden located around it, looking for weak spots, any evidence and possible witnesses simultaneously. He’d been lucky only with the first point which was doubtlessly useful for foiling future assassination attempts, but hardly facilitated solving the one that had already happened. He’d devoted last night to painting  so when at sunset at the urging of Riario he’d caught a break to refresh himself with some wine and fruit, a short nap had overcome him quickly and easily.

Leonardo cast a look at the window outside of which it barely started to grow dusk and realized his sleep was really short. What a thing to dream of…

“In my dream I saw Lucrezia,” he confessed.  

“I feel you on that one. Anyone would cry in such a situation.”

Leonardo was briefly tempted to throw an orange at the count who kept a totally serious face.

“In my dream she died,” he explained.

“That’s rather sad,” Riario replied flatly.

Leonardo wasn’t surprised. He could see perfectly that there was nothing like warm kindred relationship between the cousins. Quite the contrary. After all, Riario had tried threatening Lucrezia’s death for him during their first meeting. After all, it was Riario who had ordered his men to chain Lucrezia and Zo and throw them into the sea. 

“However, I’m not a dream reader,” Riario continued. “Probably your friend Zoroaster would be more helpful here.”

Leonardo made a mental note that even though Riario hadn’t conceived amity for Zo he no longer called him a dog or a mongrel. Apparently, willing or unwilling, you took a semblance of positive feelings to a person who’d helped to carry your almost lifeless body through the jungle.

“Don’t you happen to know where she is now?” Leonardo asked, pouring the leftover wine into his goblet to shake off drowsiness.  

“I haven't the slightest idea,” Riario shrugged. “But you don’t have to worry. She’s like a viper, she’ll outlive us all and she’s quite capable of sending anyone to heaven.”

 _Just like her cousin_ , Leonardo wanted to quip, but stopped himself.

“I reckon that’s enough investigating for today,” Riario said, nodding at the darkening rectangle of the window. “Tomorrow you’ll be able to talk to the physician who examined the cardinal’s body. Would you prefer to stay overnight or depart to your place?”

Of course, Leonardo chose to stay. He felt a bit bad about the unfinished commissions, but just a smidge. First, there had been many of them, barely started, half-finished, almost finished, forgotten and destroyed. Second, he’d not arrived in Rome in search of earnings, and besides, it would be much easier to spy upon Riario with no need to work out a plan for the break-in.

“Wait,” Leonardo stopped Riario at the doorway. “You said I’d be able to talk to a physician. I’d like to examine the body personally.” 

“Alas, it cannot be arranged. It's been a while so the funeral took place several days ago.”

Leonardo cocked his head to the side.

“The cardinal was buried without enquiring into the causes of his death?”

“The causes of his death are clear,” Riario pointed out patiently. “You’ll know them in detail tomorrow. The murderer hasn’t been found though. But we don’t need the body for that, do we?”

Leonardo pursed his lips discontentedly. That physician could not be competent at all.

“Da Vinci.” Riario saw his expression. “Don’t you even think about making Zoroaster dig up the body otherwise he won’t get away with merely the Widow’s Tear as punishment.”  

“I wasn’t going to do that,” Leonardo shook his head pretty honestly.

Riario looked him up and down suspiciously and was about to leave the room, but then glanced back again. “And don’t try anything yourself. Otherwise…”

“Otherwise I won’t get away with merely the Widow’s Tear as punishment, I get it.” Leonardo raised his hands placatingly. “I won’t disturb your cardinal’s rest, you have my word.”

He really wasn’t going to roam graveyards for the next few nights: he had more pressing matters on the agenda.  

So, as soon as Riario’s footsteps died down around the corner, Leonardo followed him. First off, he needed to find out where the count’s private rooms were located in this intricate web of passages, stairs and galleries. He had little difficulty in completing this task. Leonardo worried that in view of possible presence of the murderer in the building Riario had given orders to post guards at his door, but these fears weren’t realized. Probably the count was too presumptuous for such precautions. _Or maybe he doesn’t want too many eyes see him leaving at night_ , Leonardo thought and concealed himself in the wall opening behind the marble pillar. Or rather it was a big unfilled crack. This shelter seemed decent, small and deep enough to hide him both from strangers’ eyes and ever-present drafts while at the same time capacious enough to spare him from having to roll up in awkward poses.   

However, the first night went without any progress. Leonardo made sure that Riario had entered his rooms and then he sat in his hiding place ‘til the morning, starting to fall into a light slumber repeatedly and waking up with a start at the smallest noise. Alas, the noise was mostly caused by footsteps of guards patrolling the corridors. His daytime efforts had allowed Leonardo to take a good look at the palace from outside. The rooms were housed too high to get out of the window and as far as Leonardo remembered there were neither suitable pillars nor grape-vines there. There was the possibility of a rope-ladder hidden in the rooms, finally, the entrance to an underground passage could be right inside.

Leonardo made a mental note to find his way to the count’s dwelling – if not in secret then wrangling an invitation – and thoroughly explore it. However, his doubts were alleviated by the unexpected visit of signora Cereta who walked through the door around the time when they were saying _horae matutinae_ in churches and appeared again when the sky outside of the high narrow windows started to turn gray. For some time Leonardo was toying with the idea that they both were involved in the mysterious activity of the Labyrinth, but quickly deemed this thought unlikely. He heaved a sigh, tensing and relaxing his slightly stiff arms and legs. Riario had clearly spent the night in a much more pleasant way. Soon after the sunrise the count himself appeared in the corridor. Leonardo followed him ‘til the man met with Sixtus after which he headed for the room provided for him – to try snatch some sleep.     
***

  
He was awoken by a pretty painful dig in the ribs. Leonardo opened his eyes reluctantly: nightmares hadn’t disturbed him, but this fact failed to save him from serious lack of sleep. He rolled on his side and stared at Riario unkindly. The count – as fresh as paint – said with faux affection, “Wake up, artista. The fair sun's been up for hours so up you get, too.”   
In saying so, he smiled wryly and tapped on the hilt of his sword, and Leonardo understood which shape the bruise would take which was most likely to spread on his ribs. Unfortunately, he’d been able to neither lock himself in nor at least barricade the door: there was no heavy furniture in the room save for the bed he’d slept in.

“The fair sun has much more work to do than I that’s why it’s up at an ungodly hour, and I can afford a lie-in,” Leonardo mumbled.

Against his own words, he got out of the bed obediently because Riario arched his eyebrow and kept tapping on the hilt of his sword even more pointedly. His eyes hurt and stung a bit as if irritated by fine sand. His leg felt stiff again. Leonardo hobbled from the wash pitcher to the fragile table on which his breakfast had been already served, tidying himself and trying to pay no attention to the meaningful looks which seemed to bore holes in his back.    
“You’ve had little sleep and didn’t take off your clothes as I can see,” Riario voiced his thoughts finally. “I even wonder what you’ve been doing all night.”

For a moment Leonardo felt his intestines turn into a lump of ice. Could the count notice he’d been followed?

“I didn’t dig up your precious cardinal, do not worry,” Leonardo replied, schooling his voice carefully.

He wanted to add, _be thankful that I don’t wonder what you’ve been doing all night_ , but for more than one reason he kept the poisonous remark to himself. In fairness, it was worth noting that there was no fear of offending Riario among those reasons.

To rid himself of further conversation, Leonardo bent over the tray with exaggerated interest and stuffed his mouth with apple slices, orange wedges and grapes simultaneously. While he was at it he saw no meat courses and wondered absently if Riario had remembered that he didn’t eat meat or they’d just decided to skimp on expenses.   
In the chapel Riario, just as he’d promised, introduced him to the physician who’d examined the body. Leonardo didn’t really learn anything new from their conversation. Quite the contrary. After the physician completed his report Leonardo, who didn’t hear a few extremely important details from his visions, wandered around for a while as if deep in thought after which he approached the tabernacle and found exactly what he expected there – the heart wearing a crown of thorns and already touched by decomposition. The physician gasped. Riario didn’t show his surprise so clearly, but got a bit wide-eyed, too.

“How come didn’t you tell me about this?”  

Leonardo suddenly felt overwhelmed by exasperation: he couldn’t stand negligence. Well, at least when accuracy was really important. He started bearing down on the physician and the man, still staring at the heart owlishly, recoiled.

“I-I-I said that Cardinal Rodrigo had lacked his heart…”

“And that it was never found?”

“W-w-we… I-I-I… I didn’t think it was important…”

“But it is!” Leonardo shoved the heart into the physician’s hands and the man, getting pricked by thorns, almost dropped it. “It! Is! Important! Everything is important in investigating! Every little detail!” He took a breath, trying to get a grip on himself, and muttered, “I should’ve examined the body personally…”

Leonardo surprised himself with his own outburst of rage. After all, the situation was nowhere near as desperate as in his vision. He didn’t have to get money to fight the Ottomans, to save his country and its people, to avenge his father’s death. Time wasn’t running out. Sixtus hadn’t imposed any conditions. He’d volunteered to help Riario though he wasn’t obliged to lift a finger: Zo was right in saying ‘Let them have fun and leave us alone’. In the end, Leonardo had agreed to this venture only to get closer to Riario and find out what the count had gotten himself into. And still for some obscure reason his blood was boiling: he wanted either to shout or cry. However, Leonardo did neither and instead said somewhat calmer, “Now I’ll have to hear what you’ve got to say again, whereas lost time, unlike invested money, doesn’t return with profit.”

“Repeat your report, doctor Bugiardini,” Riario who hitherto had kept silent intervened with chill courtesy. “Do not miss anything. If a fly sat on Cardinal Rodrigo you’re to tell us how many times it rubbed its front legs together. Signor da Vinci needs each detail you can provide.”

Scared to death, squeezing the heart in his hand nervously – and as a consequence squealing softly now and then – the physician went to the other extreme. But in the end his story became consistent with what Leonardo had seen almost completely. Save for one moment.

“You said his mouth had been sewn shut?” he probed.

The physician nodded jerkily. His head seemed about to fall off.

“Did he have anything in there?”

“I… I… didn’t check,” the physician bubbled and squinted with fear as if bracing for impending death.

But Leonardo was entirely calm again. Everything fit. This meant that the host was most likely to be in its right place even if this assumption was impossible to verify.

Riario dismissed the trembling physician, and Leonardo suspected that someone was going to lose his position. And this someone would be lucky if he didn’t lose his head in addition. He didn’t take the heart though because he wasn’t willing to show it to Sixtus in person. The Ottomans’ invasion or not, the Pope’s temper was no bowl of cherries. 

“No offence meant, count,” he commented to lighten things up a bit, “but your court physicians are not at all proficient in treating the dead.”

“Neither in treating the alive, to be honest with you,” Riario shrugged. “How did you know about the heart? And what made you think that the cardinal must’ve had something in his mouth?”

“My gut, I guess,” Leonardo answered nonchalantly. “Besides, I thought if the killer had placed something sacred in the tabernacle, maybe he’d taken something sacred out. For example, the flesh of Christ.”

“Flesh?” Riario asked. “Do you mean a host? But why would this monster administer Last Rites to his own victim?”

“The murderer is a religious person.” Leonardo was glad he didn’t have to explain this to Sixtus. “And an artist to some extent. Judging from the display of the victim’s body, some weird aesthetic isn’t alien to him, he’s familiar with the rituals and uses church symbolism. Along with this, he repents what he’s done, but he cannot stop killing. Have your people to check everyone with Vatican access, perhaps, some priest became deranged.”

“The list is going to be long. But if he repents it means Father’s… the Holy Father’s brother has nothing to do with this…”

Riario’s voice trailed away and sounded distracted: apparently, the count was already going over suspects in his mind.

“Thank you, artista,” he concluded finally. “You've been a big help. At least, you’ve given an idea though your assumption about the Flesh of Christ seems somewhat far-fetched. I suppose you should go back to your work for the present. You have commissions and I keep detaining you from your duties.”

That was a surprise and not a wanted one. Leonardo didn’t anticipate that his stay in the palace would end so soon. And things had worked so well until this moment! Now the spying was going to become far more complicated.

“If anything new is disclosed before you leave the city I’ll let you know.” Riario looked in his face. “Is something wrong?”

“I… I’d like to have possibility to come back in the evenings while I’m here, I need to do some more research,” Leonardo lied hastily.

Riario hemmed in some surprise, but only shrugged.

“That can be arranged. The only thing is that I won’t be able to keep you company, I’ll be extremely busy. However, I’ll ask the guards to let you in and allow you to move around the palace within certain established limits. You may pass nights in that same room if you need.”

“I think I won’t get lost.” Leonardo lightened up. “Thank you, count.”

“You're most welcome,” Riario replied benignly, but an instant later he frowned and thrust his finger at him. “And don’t you even think…”

“I remember that and I’m still not going to dig up the cardinal,” Leonardo sighed. “Anyway, we already know everything we need.”

When he returned to the house at Via di Corte Savella a nice surprise was waiting for him there. More truly, in the first place Zo was waiting for him there.

“Ah!” He raised his goblet in greeting. “The return of the prodigal artist. Why so soon? I thought you and Riario were galloping through emerald-green valleys to the fairyland of free love and the wind was disheveling your coursers’ manes.”  
“If we galloped anywhere it would be to the stake,” Leonardo snorted. “Especially here, in Rome.”

Strangely enough, the thought didn’t provoke indignation. As regards Riario, not the stake. It wasn’t even about who Riario was. Now and then natural curiosity, thirst for knowledge and admiration for a beautiful body had led Leonardo far beyond what was approved by the church. It was about _who_ Riario was. But not in the way one could think.

Leonardo completely lost the track of his mental line of reasoning and Zo was about to add something else, but suddenly – what a surprise – Nico stuck his head round the door.    

“Good afternoon, Maestro!”

“Nico!” Leonardo exclaimed, pleasantly surprised. “Nice to see you! Probably Vanessa is here, too?”

“No.” Nico clouded up a bit. “Lorenzo doesn’t let her out of his sight nor Giulio off his lap. He tried to ban me from the palace, but Vanessa dissuaded him from doing it.”

Listening to him, Leonardo went in front of his easel and set to work on a new painting. On the way from the palace an acquaintance of the current commissioner had waylaid him and asked him to paint a maiden and a unicorn. The man had made a down payment up front and Leonardo had readily agreed. He had grave doubts about his chances of actually finishing the painting, but declining commissions wasn’t his style. Moreover, a unicorn was basically a horse, and he was extremely taken by drawing horses.

“I reckon, by way of compromise, Lorenzo took it into his head to send me away pro tempore, and thus on his errand I’m in Rome,” Nico continued. “So I decided to drop by and inform you that you can return to Florence. Lorenzo no longer bears you a grudge and I think he’s even willing to see you.”

“To built another cannon?” Leonardo made a wry face.

He put too much pressure on the charcoal pencil and spat an oath, looking at the overly thick line. Even if the Ottomans hadn’t stolen his designs… He still knew the worth of his war plans and what would happen if they got into the hands of the wrong people.

Nico exchanged glances with Zo.

“I thought you liked building weapons,” he said carefully.

“Leo has lost the will to dabble in engineering for the present,” Zo interposed. “Right, Leo? So, are we going home?”

“I have plenty of orders,” Leonardo gestured around the loggia. “And we haven’t… finished with Riario yet.”

“Did you see him?” Nico put in a word. “How’s he doing?”

“The limp is barely noticeable,” Leonardo answered, proud of his healing abilities. “I believe he’s recovered. Once again spick and span and all too often arouses a strong desire to punch him.” 

“You’re not dissimilar in this regard,” Zo observed under his breath.

“I’ll return later. My studio…” It was when Leonardo remembered the fire. “Oh, my studio…”

Nico broke into a proud smile and patted his arm.

“We fixed up your studio. The beams weren’t affected so the building survived. The interior looks a bit empty right now, but we restored the table and I bought some things you routinely use.”

“Aw, Nico!” Leonardo gave him a strong hug. “Thank you so much! You’re great. I’d kiss you,” he joked good-naturedly, “but we’re in Rome.”

Nico had long ago stopped being a round-cheeked urchin who used to run after Leonardo everywhere and hold him in veneration, but the praise still made him flush up.

Leonardo released him from his arms and fished out a scrap of paper.

“I’m going to write a list of items I need in my studio by the time I’m back. Buy them if you haven’t done that yet.”

Zo let out a loud laugh and Nico could only make a helpless gesture. Leonardo paid no regard to their reaction. When the list was ready Nico hid it within his shirt and left the loggia. Leonardo could hear them talking in the other room, but he didn’t try to make out words, immersing himself in drawing. Zo came back to the loggia and looked at the sketch which had already taken shape.

“Wow, purity and innocence?” 

“To tell you the truth, I don't think much of it as a symbol of purity,” Leonardo confided to him casually, flipping through his notebook in search of the page filled with sketches of horses’ legs. “According to the legend, unicorns are attracted to a naked bosom. It has nothing to do with innocence.”

Zo looked wistfully at the maid who was pretty well-endowed and concluded sagely, “Well, everyone will fall for a naked bosom. Even if he’s not a unicorn.”

 ***  


It was three days later when fortune smiled upon Leonardo finally.

During the day he painted feverishly, feeling light twinges of conscience and perhaps greed. Leonardo was surprised at himself because for him inspiration had always stood above money reward while Zo kept patting his shoulder and repeating, “You grew up, Leo, about time.”

In the evenings he pretended to search for the killer arduously and his nights were spent in the wall opening behind the pillar. Riario entered his rooms late and left them early and didn’t emerge in between. Even signora Cereta no longer visited him. In spite of his general cared-for look, Riario seemed tired: his nose and cheekbones became even sharper, dark circles appeared under his eyes.   

Leonardo was already pretty afflicted with tiredness and lack of sleep and thought if not of dropping this whole spying thing then at least of taking a break and catching up on sleep, but on the fourth night he was dragged out of his light slumber by the groan of the door. Leonardo shook himself and when Riario began to walk down the corridor with a businesslike air he followed. Judging by the fact that Riario dove behind the pillar when he heard the guards’ footsteps, Leonardo concluded he was on the right track.

After long minutes of wandering along corridors and galleries Riario walked out into a little almost empty hall. The stones of the floor and the walls smelled like mustiness and abandonment. A narrow hole was covered with a tapestry eaten by mice and insects. Leonardo had to climb through it on all fours, but then the passage got wider though it still remained quite narrow: both Riario’s and Leonardo’s heads almost touched the ceiling. The only illumination was the torch Riario carried, so it was convenient to follow him: deep shadows and walls abound with ledges and cavities served as good hiding places – they allowed Leonardo to get very close to his target, keeping up with him, and still remain unnoticed. In passing he noticed a red horned symbol painted on the wall. His heart skipped a beat and raced: his suppositions were confirmed. Soon a glimmer of light appeared ahead, clanking and voices could be heard from there. Leonardo had to stay a bit behind. Riario disappeared round the turn and Leonardo stayed put, pressing himself to the wall on the border where brighter torch light broke shadows.   

Apparently, besides Riario, two people were talking. One of the voices – a hot tide of anger swept over Leonardo – belonged to Carlo. He had to take a deep breath and squeeze the stone protruding from the wall over his head so tight it almost hurt so as not to try to avenge the death of Andrea right then and there, giving himself away. To calm down and concentrate, he started to listen with intense eagerness. The walls reflected the sound pretty nicely, but there was a crackling torch right over his head, and on top of that the conversation was held in hushed tones. The bits and pieces of it which did come to his ears didn’t carry any exact information. Riario and the stranger weren’t happy with Carlo for some reason, Riario voiced his suspicion about the cardinal’s death and wanted to meet an architect (most probably the Architect and this hardly had something to do with the art of building), the stranger was instructing Riario to use the murder and Sixtus’s anxiety. How exactly and for which purpose remained a mystery. And then the stranger inquired a bit louder, “Are you having doubts?” and Riario agreed and asked, “Then may I ask for more guidance?”, and everything went silent. For a minute Leonardo listened for any noise, then, very carefully, he peeped into the brightly lit hall. The room was empty by now. He had time to see a table full of vessels and metal copies of that symbol from the wall and the entrance to the adjoining hall, after which a scream erupted from there and, reflecting off the walls, filled the room and the corridor.  

Leonardo recognized the voice immediately though Riario hadn’t screamed like that even when in the hot humid forest near the Stone City Leonardo had been setting his broken bone. That time the scream had been muffled by the stick he’d snapped between his teeth, but now the horrible sounds, unhindered, kept reverberating around the hall, and suddenly panic overwhelmed Leonardo, the walls seemed to constrict, so he broke into a run like a deer blinded by terror and came to his senses only in front of the door of Riario’s rooms.

His heart was about to break from the prison of his ribs, his thoughts were racing. Had the stranger and Carlo attacked Riario? Should he apprize the guards and send help? But Leonardo hadn’t heard any fighting. Besides, a sudden injury would hardly have made Riario scream for so long. Fairly speaking, it sounded as if he’d been tortured. But… the count had been talking with his accomplices calmly, he’d come with them of his own volition and then for no apparent reason they’d grabbed him and started torturing? Without asking any questions? To be heard over the screams, the tormentors would have had to ask their questions at the top of their voices.

Being completely at a loss, Leonardo decided grudgingly to wait a little. Time was passing painfully slowly and he was about to set out on a search for the guards when he heard the footsteps again and Riario – alive and intact by the look of him – crossed the corridor and walked in the door. Leonardo was extremely confused. He returned to his room and sat on the bed. His eyes burnt. He rubbed them, expecting to see moisture on his fingers, but they turned out to be absolutely dry. Leonardo kneaded his stiff leg and fell on the bed. The screams kept ringing through his ears.     
***  


Five nights in a row Riario walked through the same passage and Leonardo followed him diligently. Sometimes there was only the stranger in the hall with a table, sometimes Carlo joined their conversation. From their interaction Leonardo found out that the stranger was a physician. He remembered the murdered man from his visions and couldn’t help but wonder if it was that very physician whom Riario had mentioned in the bath-house stinking of blood. He hadn’t managed to see the man’s face so far. Besides, if Clarice was dead then who would kill him? Those meetings didn’t last long. After having a short conversation which made it clear that the Labyrinth was plotting something, but didn’t give a clue what exactly, the conspirators departed. Riario kept insisting on seeing the mysterious Architect, but apparently didn’t succeed.

Leonardo tried to rest for a few hours during the daytime, but his sleep was most fitful – he dreamt of meaningless chanting, a splitting headache whose aftershocks clung even after he woke up and long chocking screams. The voice belonged to Riario, not him. 

Perhaps carelessness begotten by lack of sleep and migraines was the reason or maybe the fact that on the fifth night Leonardo had had to leave the catacombs to the accompaniment of screaming again played its treacherous role, anyway, on the sixth night he snapped out of the short sleep at his hiding point and almost shrieked. In front of the wall opening, leaning on the pillar, Riario stood with his arms folded on his chest and looked down at him.

“Wake up, Leonardo,” he called loudly.

“Count Riario?” The predawn stillness was broken by footsteps, and three guards appeared behind Riario’s back. “Are you all right?”  

“Absolutely,” the count replied without glancing back. “I invited signor da Vinci to discuss a portrait, but our agreement slipped my mind.”

The guards blinked and then began to guffaw all together. Sluggish anger burnt Leonardo. The picture which could form in someone else’s eyes didn’t look so flattering: it seemed as if the painter sought work so desperately that he had spent the night by the customer’s door after the prospective client hadn’t appeared.

The guards finished laughing and went back to their business.

“Searching the murderer wasn’t enough for you so you decided to keep an eye on my safety personally?”

Riario asked amiably. “It’s extremely nice of you.”

However, his intonations and especially his eyes – chatoyant, resembling strange black ice in semidarkness – suggested the opposite. On the other hand, the count didn’t try to unsheathe his weapon and this could be considered a good sign. Just as the fact that Riario sighed and held out his hand.

“Let’s have a talk.”   

Leonardo, as if sodden with slumber and surprise, took the offered helping hand, scrambled to his feet, entered the room and, obeying the inviting gesture, sat on the soft chair. He understood perfectly that questioning was about to begin (and he’d be lucky if without violence), so he had to think up a suitable excuse as soon as possible, but his head was empty, save for ‘You did want to wrangle an invitation so you’ve got it.’  Riario unhurriedly removed his scabbard and the thick black doublet he wore – now he had only a loose shirt and trousers on – lit a few more candles alongside the one which was burning on the windowsill and started pouring wine. Leonardo took the time to look round the room quickly. The interior looked just like he’d imagined it – not cheap, but modest. Nothing like a monk’s cell, of course, but without unnecessary finery and with the most basic furniture. The walls weren’t painted or adorned in any way, only one of them held a simple wooden crucifix. Leonardo clung to this detail, trying to play for time.  

“Seek mercy from those who, having ears, cannot hear?”

Usually Riario went for such jabs pretty easily. On the ship when it had become clear that Leonardo himself had a quite good knowledge of the Scripture they had held lengthy discussions to relieve the boredom of long days at sea and take Riario’s mind off the pain, trying to call each other on ignorance or misinterpretation of biblical verses. Riario had been plainly horrified by Leonardo’s interpretations, but he’d pushed his point rather on principle than with foam at the mouth. The events of the past months had shaken his inviolable faith even if one could hardly notice that.

“Sorry, I’m not in the mood today.” Riario brought him a goblet. “Besides, I don’t ask anyone… for mercy.”

He seemed to stumble and cloud up a bit, but a moment later a frown left his face, and Riario perched on the edge of the table, fidgeting with his own goblet.

“It’s a pity,” Leonardo couldn’t help but give it another go, “because a most curious question has come to my mind. Just look. ‘Thou shalt not kill’ is the sixth commandment whilst ‘Ye shall make you no idols nor graven image’ is the second one. So art is a bigger sin than murder?”

“It’s an extremely curious question,” Riario agreed listlessly. “But we may well save it for tomorrow. Right now I’d like to know what you were doing by my door. Something tells me this night isn’t the first one.”

Leonardo still couldn’t think of any convincing excuse, so he seized on the idea expressed by Riario.

“I wanted to keep an eye on your safety personally,” he repeated parrot-like.

Riario took a sip of wine and shook his head.

“I appreciate your concern, but I’ve already recovered and don’t need a chaperone.”

Leonardo almost breathed a sigh of relief, but Riario added, “Besides, you’re lying. Any more stories?”

“I wanted to pay you a visit,” Leonardo blurted out.

At least, it was unalloyed truth.

“You’re here.” Riario spread his hands invitingly and smoothly, taking care not to spill his wine. “May I ask the nature of your visit?”

Leonardo groaned inwardly. He needed to distract Riario. And to do it in such a way that the count forgot about his questions at least ‘til the morning. Perhaps, in the light of day it would be easier to pull his wits together and come up with a decent explanation.

The solution came to him immediately as if it had been waiting by the door just as he had done earlier. The solution was lousy, but it was better than Riario finding the truth.

“I… do care for you,” Leonardo said in a slightly lower voice. “And I did seek a meeting with you.”

He stood up, leaving his wine on the floor, while Riario was staring at him, not moving a muscle, his eyes blank. Leonardo shuddered, recalling the deadly entirely black look from under thick eyelashes, the unnaturally long tongue and the tar-dark blood pouring over the bare silvery chest. But Riario kept silent and Leonardo continued putting his plan into action.  

“I wanted to be alone with you.” He approached very close, removed the goblet from Riario’s fingers and put it aside. “During that journey I’ve gotten to know you and then I realized I…”

The words – only partly insincere, truth be told – froze in his mouth. Leonardo sat down next to Riario, turning halfway to him and never taking his eyes off that statuesque face. Suddenly Riario licked his lips, tongue darting out in a flash, and Leonardo raised his hand and ran his thumb tip along the other man’s chapped lower lip, pitting a bit of pressure into it. The warm tongue touched his finger lightly as a feather and all hastily contrived intentions left Leonardo simultaneously and at once, at the drop of a hat. He jerked back his hand and gave a nervous laugh.  

“Speaking of a tongue. I’ve educated myself about its movements recently and identified seven of them: extension, contraction, attraction, swelling, shortening, expansion and flattening. I wish I had my notebook with me, my sketches…”

He hiccupped and fell silent when Riario’s fingers squeezed his thigh. Not only with surprise – stabbing pain shot through his muscles only to disappear completely in the next moment.

“You’re popular with women, aren’t you?” Riario asked as if they were making a small talk.

“Erm…” Leonardo replied very sagely.

“I’d venture to take this sound for an affirmative reply. So, when you court a lady – of course if you bother with such formality – do you really give her lectures on tongue movements?”  

Leonardo finally managed to look up from the thin knuckled fingers which were rumpling his pant leg and looked in Riario’s face. The count were staring at him as only he could – openly, attentively, with the genuine desire to receive an answer and with subtle, but undisguised mockery.

“Of course not,” Leonardo backed off. “Ladies aren’t interested in things like that. And you..?”

“Oh, but I am.” Riario took his hand off in his turn. “I’m very interested. However…” he clicked his tongue thoughtfully, gazing into vacant space. “I recall on that ship you mentioned once that theory was nothing without practice. You know what I mean?”

Leonardo knew what he was implying. Leonardo had absolutely no idea what the hell was happening.

“Erm…” he responded even more sagely and then – to his own surprise – reached to Riario and kissed him on the lips.

Then again, and again, and again, with only breaks to draw a breath. And then the guards’ footsteps thundered along the corridor and he staggered back though he could see that the door was locked from the inside.

“Mmmm,” Riario intoned. “Now your tale of tongue movements is completed. I think I memorized them all.”

Leonardo smiled sheepishly whereupon Riario laughed brusquely and angrily and in one lightning-like move put a dagger to his neck. Leonardo froze, afraid even to swallow.

“Your charms are sweet, artista, but you’d better hone them on Florentine simpletons,” Riario said very quietly, almost in a whisper. “It would be safer for you. I don’t know what exactly you’ve been smelling round here, but from now on you won’t set foot in the palace. I’ll inform the guards. If I catch you here again I’ll cut your tongue from your mouth and find out how many movements it’s capable of when not attached to you. Is that clear?”

“Abundantly,” Leonardo muttered.

He felt hot, then cold. Fear and disappointment mixed with relief.

“Finish your wine and go home to bed.” Riario jumped off the table and opened the door. “You look like a ghost.”

“Okay.” Leonardo emptied his goblet without tasting the wine and walked out. “Good night.”

“More like good morning,” Riario shrugged and slammed the door shut.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Il gomitolo - the ball of yarn


	3. Il prigioniero

The light was flowing through the little hole in the ceiling. Finding himself in the familiar hall, the first thing Leonardo did was to check if the situation with the torches and the doors had changed. Alas, flames kept going out. However, in each of the corridors he tried he caught a glimpse of a dead body. He knew them all: the bald man sitting cross-legged with a wound in his stomach; the physician tied to a chair and tortured to death; and Clarice Orsini hanging on the cross leaned against the wall. Leonardo didn’t even try to think what all that could mean. He just put another torch back into another sconce and went to the center of the hall with a sigh.

Riario bowed his head slowly in greeting. He moved carefully and smoothly – Leonardo had seen Turkish women with head loads in the market walking in a similar way. His stare got stuck to the horns immediately. Well, it was quite understandable with such a weight…

“You’re looking at me as if you’re going to ask if you can touch me,” Riario said.

“I hope I won’t offend you saying you don’t exactly look like a cute fluffy calf.”

In fact, Leonardo did want to touch him. Not just touch, but examine him, find out how this strange creature’s body worked, how it was even able to live even if in his own imagination.

Leonardo stretched his hand.

“May I?”

Riario shrugged, and he ran his fingers along the smooth horn, ruffled the short silvery-gray fur on the top of Riario’s head. In doing so, he rubbed one ear slightly and almost expected it to twitch like a cow’s, but the ear – shaped pretty much like a human one – didn’t move. Instead, Riario bared his teeth in a grin. His teeth resembled neither human’s nor bull’s; they were triangular and looked very sharp. Leonardo withdrew his hand hastily.

“You’re surprisingly tactful today.”

Leonardo frowned blankly.  

“Unlike during our little night adventure,” Riario explained.

Leonardo was confused for another moment, then the words sank in and he swore under his breath.

“Ah, yeah,” he muttered awkwardly. “You’re my dream, therefore you know what I know.”

“I know more,” Riario objected.

“We all know more than we think. Some part of our knowledge is tucked away ‘til we need it, and some part is hidden by us on purpose though we don’t even know it exists.”

Riario smiled condescendingly, this time with his mouth closed.

“Okay.” Leonardo sat opposite him. “If you know more, tell me how you’re connected to the Labyrinth.”

Riario chuckled and spread his hands.

“Directly.”

Shit. The wrong question. They were sitting very literally inside the damned Labyrinth. And still Leonardo tried again.

“I’m not speaking about this Labyrinth.”

“There is only one Labyrinth. We are one.”

  _Open your eyes and see. Open your eyes and see. We are the horns of the increate. We are the unity within the beast._  
A twinge of stabbing pain shot through his head, the torches on the wall blurred, turning for a moment into smudgy spots of light which offended his eyes. Leonardo broke into a sweat instantly, and then the pain subsided as fast as it had appeared.

“I’ll get you… out of here,” he managed haltingly.

His vision cleared. Riario was looking at him unblinkingly, and in the black bottomless pits under the long fair eyelashes something like compassion was flickering.

“You won’t,” he said. “You do remember how the myth of the Minotaur ends. Theseus killed him with his bare hands. When the time comes and you have no other choice you’ll do the same.”

“No.” Leonardo shook his head and aftershocks of the pain made him cringe. “Some paintings contain a different version. According to it, Theseus brought the Minotaur out of the Labyrinth. Bound but alive.”

“The Minotaur cannot leave the Labyrinth. They were both created. The former one – in sin, the latter – to hide this sin,” Riario sighed loudly. “The Minotaur, just like everything which is made artificially, is not able to live among people.”

He stirred, making himself comfortable, folded his hands on his chest, and then Leonardo noticed something dark which showed up distinctly against the gray fur on his smooth side, just above the ribs.

“What’s that?”

“Ah,” Riario raised his arm slightly. “You yourself mentioned I looked like a bull. And every bull is to wear a brand.”

On his silvery skin the horned symbol was burnt – the one Leonardo had seen on the wall of the underground corridor and on the physician’s table.

“What’s that?” he repeated.

“The mark of Architect,” Riario flashed a sharp-toothed smile again. “Now you see, Leonardo? I belong to the Labyrinth. If you want to save me you’ll have to kill me. But not now.” He reached out his hand. “Did my dear relative happen to give you anything?”

“Your… relative?” Leonardo flipped through the myth in his memory feverishly. “Ariadne? To me? No, why? I’ve never…”

Riario kept holding his hand up patiently.

“Ah!” Something clicked in his thoughts. “ _Your_ relative? You mean your cousin? Lucrezia?”

Leonardo fumbled within his shirt and – to his own surprise – fished out a ball of red yarn. The one which the dying Lucrezia had given to him in his dream. He put it on the waiting palm.

“Will this thread show you the way out?”

“This thread will help me to show _you_ the way out,” Riario corrected. “I’m staying. I belong to the Labyrinth, you don’t.”

“I don’t need to be shown the way out.” Leonardo bolted to his feet and started pacing around the hall. “It’s my dream! I can get out of here any moment!”  

Riario laughed out and was laughing a long time – a booming echo was bouncing under the stone vaults. Leonardo waited. Riario stopped laughing and nodded, “Then get out of here, artista.”

Leonardo looked at him with some suspicion, half-expecting something frightening, but the light flowing from the ceiling just transformed into the pale blue-tinted mist which got thicker quickly and obscured everything.    
***  


“Are you painting or trying to pierce through this canvas with your brush?” Zo asked, looking up from the cards laid out on the table.

There was probably only one positive moment in everything that had happened. Leonardo had slept almost ‘til the evening and for the first time in days he felt well-rested. But his mood was still pretty nasty. Spying on Riario without his knowledge was one thing. Spying on Riario with the clear and very strict warning not to do this was another. Of course, in recognition of the literally lifesaving Riario wouldn’t actually kill him and his threat about the tongue had been most likely an exaggeration… Or maybe it hadn’t.  

‘You don’t need your tongue to paint.’ The very familiar voice sounded in his thoughts so distinctly that Leonardo swallowed nervously.

“Riario caught me spying on him in the early morning,” he mumbled, looking daggers at the maiden hugging the unicorn.

“Ow,” Zo breathed out sympathetically. “However, as far as I can see, you’re alive and still with a complete set of limbs.”

“Yes, even though I didn’t manage to make up a convincing excuse.”

“You’re getting old and losing your skills,” his friend stated. “You should’ve said that you suddenly wanted to paint his portrait.”

“That’s how he explained my presence to the guards,” Leonardo confessed. “I really felt very stupid.” 

“Okay, you could’ve said you’ve conceived a passion from him and sought the chance to be alone.” Zo reached for the pitcher and took a few big gulps.

“So that he’d stab me?” Leonardo snorted, but then sighed and added, “That’s what I told him.”

He heard a sound which could be produced by a drinking horse which caught a tadpole in its nostril. Leonardo looked up anxiously: Zo, holding the pitcher in his outstretched hand, was contemplating the sodden cards ruefully.

“You’re such a blockhead,” he only said.  

“Probably,” Leonardo put the brush aside. “And still the count is clearly in danger. We cannot do anything with the dungeons unless we want to blow up the Vatican and half of Rome as well. That means we need to separate Riario from the dungeons.”

“Ah, it can be easily done.” Zo cleaned up his bespattered shirt and started to wipe the cards dry with a cloth. “I’ll get a sack and a horse and you think of a way to knock him out.”

“Excuse me?” Leonardo looked blank. “And what will I do with him?”

“No idea, really. You can bring him to Florence and chain him up in your studio. He’ll make a nice watch-dog.”

“Zoooo.” Leonardo rolled his eyes and grabbed the brush again. “I’m serious, and you’re reducing everything to jokes.”

“Who says I’m joking?”

There was a knock at the door, loud and impatient. Leonardo and Zo looked at each other. The owner of the house was almost in awe of the Florentine artist (or at least his already paid-for works) and literally tiptoed around. He wouldn’t pound on the door.

“Open the door! The Vatican Guards!”

“Leo.” Zo put his hand over his dagger. “What the hell did you do there?”

“Nothing… special.” Leonardo threw the brush aside and reached for his sword.

“I’ll open it.” Zo headed to the room. “If things go wrong, avenge me.”

Still perplexed, Leonardo wrapped his sweaty fingers around the hilt of his sword. Had Riario changed his mind and decided to deal with him once and for all? Had he chosen not to get his hands dirty and preferred to give the order to the Swiss mercenaries?

The door burst open and at the same time Zo cried out angrily. Leonardo drew his sword and pressed his back against the wall, so that there was an almost finished sketch and the easel between him and the door. Two papal guards came into the loggia. Barely glancing at a wary Leonardo, they took a position on either side of the door. As an enormous surprise came Sixtus in the flesh who followed them. Behind his back Riario loomed like a black shadow. Even farther behind Zo could be seen. He was rubbing the back of his head and scowling – it looked like the soldiers had pushed him against the wall roughly. 

Leonardo was totally confused. The fleeting thought that Riario had complained about last night’s indecent behavior to his father (who happened to be the Holy Father) was outright ridiculous. In a different situation he’d share this assumption with Zo and they’d have a great laugh together. Or maybe Sixtus was angry because he hadn’t managed to find the murderer? Yes, the Pope hadn’t ordered anything like that and Leonardo had never seen him in the palace, but he was supposed to be informed about the search.  

Sixtus deigned to look at him a bit more attentively than at a gnat which flew into the room, after which he started scrutinizing the paintings. Meanwhile Riario approached Leonardo.

“Put your sword down, artista,” he said softly. “And stop bristling as if you’re an urchin caught with a stolen purse. It has nothing to do with your failure.”

It wasn’t clear which failure he meant. Perhaps both. Leonardo darted a wary glance at the guards and sheathed his sword.

“You’re honored by the personal visit of His Holiness,” Riario continued. “Show him due respect.” 

He stepped aside and Sixtus took his place.

“Leonardo da Vinci,” he drawled, sweeping his eyes over Leonardo arrogantly.

Leonardo snorted and jutted his chin. Last time he’d met the Pontiff there had been a lot of forced running, however this time he wasn’t going to acknowledge anyone’s supremacy. Moreover, the memory of humiliation – even if it had happened only in his strange dream – was still fresh. Leonardo promised himself he wouldn’t kiss the ring in any circumstances. That dream was just a dream, and in reality he had to neither ask nor beg.  

At Sixtus’s sign, the guards left the loggia, dragging away a seething Zo.

“Holy Father,” Leonardo nodded. “How can I help you? Do you need a painting? A fresco?”

Sixtus turned purple and made a sour face. Leonardo immediately thought that the old man looked like a toad sitting on a lily pad. Sixtus had already tried to hire him – as well as a few other Florentine artists – to paint the church, but Leonardo hadn’t agreed on principle, and with Lorenzo’s connivance he had expressed his refusal very vigorously, almost sparking the war with Rome. Besides, he didn’t like frescoes: painting upon fresh plaster required fast work and almost excluded the possibility of correcting mistakes. Oil allowed more freedom.

“I need weapons,” Sixtus said straight out. 

Leonardo became all ears. On the one hand, everyone always needed weapons, but on the other hand…

Was there really the threat from the Ottomans?

“These are troubled times,” Sixtus lowered his voice. “The Holy See’s enemies never rest. We have drawings, but they probably need some corrections. And implementation of course. These weapons should be relatively small in size and be fast to reload.”

And then Leonardo realized. The Ottomans had nothing to do with this. This wasn’t about conquests or foreign policy at all. Sixtus was scared to death. Apparently, the mysterious death of Cardinal Rodrigo had shocked him to the extent that he had decided to take care of his own safety, arming his personal guards – and perhaps himself – with something more effective than a sword or a crossbow. On top of that, he blessed with his personal presence the person he couldn’t stand the sight of. And that counted for something! Leonardo cheered up. In a twist of fate in reality he and Sixtus had switched places.

In spite of gnawing curiosity, the first impulse was to refuse proudly. First, again, on principle, second, he didn’t ever want to create anything which could cause death and destruction. However, then he came up with a great idea.

“Sure,” Leonardo said. “This can be arranged.”

He asked a substantial sum of money for his services so that it looked like greed had gotten the better of his doubts. Riario handed him a hefty bag with downpayment and a few sheets of paper.

“Not a word to anyone,” Sixtus warned him sternly. “When you decide what exactly you need, give the list to Girolamo.”

Leonardo wasn’t listening to him. He spread the sheets on the table and peered at the drawings avidly. They didn’t just need corrections, they required to be fully remade. But the idea… Leonardo could see it perfectly. Inside him the thirst for knowledge and creation fought with the understanding how damaging such a mechanism would be once it was put into effect.

He came to his senses only when the door banged loudly and an annoyed Zo returned to the loggia. Leonardo confided in him briefly about his conversation with Sixtus, all the while still perusing the papers.

“Are you going to stay in the Eternal City for all eternity?” Zo inquired. “Working for the Pope now?”

“I’m not.” Leonardo put the drawings aside reluctantly. “But we must take Riario away from here. Come to think of it, your plan isn’t half bad.”  

“To chain him up in your studio?” Zo barked out a laugh. “Ah, mate, you’re so freaky.”

“No! To bring him to Florence.” Leonardo snapped his fingers. “I’ll lie to Sixtus that I need some instruments or materials which can be found only in my studio. He does not know that the studio burned down. Moreover, Nico said it had been rebuilt. I’ll leave under the pretense of fetching them, and Riario… Hopefully, Sixtus will order him to come with me and make sure I return. Or maybe Riario will volunteer to do it – you know he’s always so distrustful. And if not, I’ll request an audience with the Pope and suggest that he should send Riario with me. Sixtus is scared out of his mind, he won’t refuse. At home we’ll think what we should do next.”

Zo shrugged helplessly.

“Well,” he figured, “it isn’t a great one, but still a plan.”  
***  
  
Leonardo worked feverishly for four days to complete the commissions and present the appearance of correcting the weapon drawings. He’d really made them more presentable, but hadn’t finished the job: not numerous, but substantial errors which had been made on purpose wouldn’t allow the creation of a working mechanism usung these drawings.

After fixing a list, Leonardo brought it to the palace and asked the guards at the gates to call Riario. He peered at the count’s face subtly as possible, but attentively, trying to figure out if something disastrous had happened in the preceding days. However, Riario looked just as usual, he greeted Leonardo politely and unfolded the list, stone-faced. But when he reached the final point the stone cracked.

“What does ‘my studio’ mean?” Riario frowned. “A studio will be equipped for you.”

“For a successful outcome I’m in dire need of some ingredients and materials which are easier, faster and cheaper to take from my studio than try to find here,” Leonardo explained in his most honest voice. “We’ll go there and straight back again. I think, we’ll return just in a week or so.”

Riario glared at him with suspicion. Leonardo looked back as innocently as he could.

“All right,” Riario said. “If the Holy Father allows…”

“Speaking of him,” Leonardo broke in, “Can the Pontiff receive me right now?”

He decided to leave nothing to chance, Sixtus’s mood or Riario’s intentions and make sure the count accompanied him.  
***  


It was a fine morning. Under the gentle rising sun Leonardo and Zo rode out the gates. Riario was already waiting for them there. The black Andalusian stallion stamped on its place, eager to set off. Its master couldn’t boast the same eagerness though.

“Apparently, you forgot to add me as the last point to your list of necessary items,” Riario said icily. 

“Not even close,” Leonardo shrugged. “You may equate people with things, seeing them just as means to an end, but it doesn’t mean that everyone else does the same.”

“Pot calling the kettle black,” Zo stuck up for Riario suddenly. “As if you never do the same.”

“Aw, you’ve ganged up on me even before we hit the road,” Leonardo complained jokingly and, noticing that both his companions were about to add something else, spurred his horse. “Let’s go, signori. It’s not a pleasure stroll.”

Their journey was absolutely unmemorable at first. They hurried, but didn’t ride their horses too hard and spent nights in inns. Riario apparently still bore Leonardo a grudge because of the deception maneuver, so he came back to being that arrogant arsehole he seemed when they’d first met. Only in the evenings in a poorly-lit tavern, over a plate of hot food and a mug of liquor, he warmed a bit and held an almost peaceful conversation with Zo about horses and wine. Well, at least the first quarter of an hour of discussing each addressed question was peaceful. After that they didn’t agree on some tiny little thing and started arguing so vehemently that other guests stared in their direction longingly, ready to join a coming fight.  

 “That’s enough quarreling, my friends,” Leonardo broke in on the second evening though hitherto he’d preferred, contrary to his usual behavior, to sit still and keep quiet. “Is such a little thing really worth fighting?”

“Truth is found in discussion,” Zo pointed out.

“In your discussion a dead body is going to be found,” Leonardo countered. “Or even two.”

This time a point of contention was horses’ names. While they were at it, Zo snatched an opportunity to make fun of the name of Riario’s horse – the name was Prince. In Leonardo’s opinion, the name suited the beautiful noble animal perfectly, but Zo began to make merry over it.

“Just listen how it sounds: the prince carries the count,” he intoned dreamily. “Oh, no, even better: the count rides the prince…”

Riario flamed up and grabbed his dagger. It took Leonardo’s and a stout barmaid’s united efforts to prevent homicide – much to the delighted audience’s disappointment. However, very soon everyone’s attention was diverted by an old beggar who stumbled into the tavern, sat right in the center of the hall and proclaimed mournfully, “Dark times are upon us! There shall be chaos in many places, fire shall often break out, the wild animals shall roam beyond their haunts, and menstruous women shall bring forth monsters!”  

The inn guests got quiet, then began buzzing anxiously. Zo snorted skeptically, Riario winced, as for Leonardo, he – pleased that the danger had temporarily passed – leaned forward and whispered, “I can talk like this, too. Here, many shall make bowels their home and shall dwell in their own bowels.”

“What is that?” Zo asked in horror.  

“Sausage stuffing.” Leonardo smiled and looked at the almost empty plate pointedly. “So a swine was running around the yard just to be…” 

“Shut up, Leo,” Zo ordered, making a face. “I really loved these sausages just a second ago.”

Riario exploded with laughter all of sudden, and Leonardo was surprised by an effort he had to make to remove his gaze from the count’s relaxed face and shining dark eyes.  
***  


Their journey was coming to an end. However, the third night caught them far from another tavern. The heavens opened in truly biblical proportions and the valley they were to cross turned into an impassable bog. The horses waded through mud, splashing themselves and their riders, and then started to sink altogether. They had to look for a detour.

The weather improved by nightfall. Riario, apparently annoyed by the halt, tried to insist on travelling through the night, but Zo and Leonardo protested in unison.

“The moon is too young,” Zo pointed out. “Do you want your dearest Prince to break his legs in the dark?”   
“Our horses are tired and we’re drowned like rats,” Leonardo echoed. “I don’t know about you, but for me it’ll be a shame to survive all the dangers of the unknown land just to die of a common cold.”

Under the double pressure Riario didn’t push back much, so they found a nice place to spend the night – with a pond of clear water and a dense grove nearby. It took them a while to build a fire, but soon the flames were dancing merrily, sharing its welcome warmth generously. After watering and brushing their horses Leonardo, Zo and Riario took care of themselves – they bathed and washed their stained clothes.

If one took several steps from the fire everything drowned in the dark and the water resembled ink, but Leonardo, who’d wrapped himself in the warm coat and settled near the fire, dared to glance at Riario only after the man fished loose linen trousers out of his travel bag and put them on. After the day’s march hindered by the downpour no one felt like talking, and Leonardo dozed off soon to the crackle of flames and even crunching of grass in the horses’ jaws.

He was woken up – it seemed just a few minutes later – by an argument in hushed voices. Leonardo’s attention was alerted. From his own experience he knew how fast the innocent squabble between Riario and Zo could escalate into a violent fight to the death.

“Why aren’t you sleeping?” he grouched. “You’re going to fall off your horses tomorrow.”

“Speaking of horses,” Zo answered brightly, coming to his side. “Your count went completely crazy and claims that horses can dance. Monkeys – okay, dogs – why not. But horses?”

“Well…” Shaking off last remnants of sleep, Leonardo sat up. “I read about equestrian dancing in Greece. That was many years ago though.”

“Prince can,” Riario said softly.

“Great,” Zo struck his hands together. “Give us a show then.”

Riario sighed.

“Zoroaster, do you seriously think I and Prince have nothing to do after the tiring day but dance in front of you?”

“No, I think you’re talking nonsense,” Zo announced triumphantly.

Leonardo couldn’t believe his own ears. Not because he thought horses were unable to dance – the pedigreed stallion clearly had no problems with rhythm, nor intelligence, nor rapport with its master. But seeing Riario to… Curiosity flared up in Leonardo and reached proportions of a small wildfire instantly. He felt he wouldn’t forgive himself for missing such a performance.  

“Indeed, Girolamo,” he said. “I would be really curious to watch it, too.”

“Girolamo,” Riario imitated him mockingly. “Now you’re a sweet talker, artista?”

And still he stood up and Leonardo flattered himself by thinking that it was his plea which made the count agree.  
Riario brought the unsaddled Prince closer. Leonardo smiled to himself. It wasn’t that easy to mount a horse without a saddle. However, this maneuver would allow him to admire Riario’s ass inconspicuously and with impunity while the count would pull himself up. And given that those baggy trousers were almost slipping down… In short, Leonardo was ready for a show which was why he uttered a half- approving half-disappointed sigh when Riario touched the horse’s leg with his bare foot and the smart animal dropped on its knees after which there was no difficulty at all in getting on its back.

Riario clapped an uncomplicated rhythm and Leonardo joined in enthusiastically. Shaking its gorgeous mane, the Andalusian really started – for lack of a better word – dancing. Answering the reins and its rider’s heels, it strutted majestically, bringing its forelegs forward, crouched, span, reared up, or stamped along the claps. When it jumped straight up into the air and kicked out with its hind legs, Leonardo couldn’t hold back a little cry of excitement and Zo let out an admiring whistle. A couple of minutes after the dance had begun Leonardo transferred ‘musician’ duties to his friend, grabbed his notebook and began sketching feverishly. Riario perfectly balanced on horseback, using only his knees. He barely moved, just sat with his back very straight and his shoulders square. It seemed almost a shame. On the other hand, waiting some kind of acrobatics from him would be a strange thing to do, to say the least. As if reading Leonardo’s mind, when Prince, after a series of hops accompanied with rhythmical head shakes to either side, started moving smoothly again, Riario leaned backwards, arching his back and almost touching the horse’s croup with his nape.  

“Whore.” Coming from Zo’s mouth, the obscenity sounded like an exquisite compliment.

Riario sneered and flipped him the finger without straightening back. The pencil, completely forgotten, fell out of Leonardo’s fingers. The glow of the full moon drew a rim of light around the horse and the rider who almost melted into one.  

Leonardo watched the muscles of the retracted stomach tremble, the arcs of the ribs expand, the Adam's apple move under the skin of the tense neck, and then he felt torturous unbidden heat surge up inside. All he craved was to leap to his feet, pull Riario off the stallion’s back and…

‘The moon is too young,’ Zo’s voice echoed in his thoughts.   
Taking his eyes off that splendid picture painted with silver, shadows and the strong beautiful bodies of the man and the animal, he looked up into the sky, at a perfect circle of the moon. The heat in his stomach immediately gave way to pieces of split ice, cold and sharp.

“Riario doesn’t need this,” he muttered aloud. “Why would he… He couldn’t… wouldn’t…”

How could he believe in something like that?  
Prince came to a halt. Riario righted himself on horseback. The moonlight was running along his body like a visible wave from top downward, transforming his tan skin and trousers into the smooth gray fur. Within moments against the sky, which grew a bit lighter, there was a horned silhouette.

“You almost managed to get over me,” Leonardo told him. “But the moon gave you away.”

“I thought suitable lighting would make my performance more spectacular.”    
Changed Riario slid down the horse’s black side like a dribble of liquid mercury. Pain erupted in Leonardo’s eyes and he closed them tight. When he recovered, he saw that the pale dawn was rising, the horses were slumbering at some distance, drooping their heads, Zo was snoring softly, wrapped into the woolen coat, and the fire was burning low.

Riario came very close and now his nudity which had been barely perceivable in the hall with doors became painfully overt.  

“Sit,” Leonardo grumbled. “I want to talk to you, not to your junk.”

“Really? Because the whole way it seemed to me that you didn’t mind having a word or two with my…”

“No! You’re not Girolamo,” Leonardo interrupted him, ablush. “You’re my dream.”

“And still in your thoughts you keep calling me his name.”

It was hard to argue with this statement. Spitting an oath under his breath, Leonardo tried to change subject.

“By the way, you said the Minotaur wasn’t able to leave the Labyrinth. In that case, what are you doing here?”  
“But I didn’t leave the Labyrinth.” Riario shrugged and sat down in the grass. “Neither did you.”

Leonardo looked around and saw the sleeping grove, the still pond, the meadow albescent with dew and the sky full of dying stars. He could hear lulling rustling of leaves, he could smell grass, humidity, burnt wood and manure.  

“My congratulations,” Leonardo said. “You decorated your dwelling nicely. The paintings on the walls and the ceiling are extremely realistic. Even with smells and sounds.”

Riario exploded with laughter, throwing back his head. Leonardo saw his teeth closer than he’d like, shuddered and promised himself he wouldn’t let this mouth near any of his body parts.

“Let’s drop this subject for now,” Riario said after he finished laughing. “That’s not why I’m here today.”

“Why then?” Leonardo asked needlessly.

Riario fixed his eyes on Leonardo’s lips and licked his own.

“No,” Leonardo repeated.

“Come on. Do you think I can’t see the way you’re looking at me?”  
“You’re not him. You’re only my dream and I’m slightly worried about my moral principles which allowed me to enflesh him in this form.”

“You have moral principles?” Riario asked in surprise. “Since when?”

He swayed towards Leonardo, clung to him, and Leonardo wrapped his arms around his body involuntarily, his fingers slid on the thick hot skin covered with sleek fur. Nuzzling into Riario’s shoulder, Leonardo felt a strange smell coming from him – not of a human or a beast, but of salt, copper and must.    
“Why are you so stubborn about it?” The hot whisper burnt his ear. “Because I’m a man? It’s never scared you off. Or it’s because I look like an animal? You’re allowed to do anything in your dream, Leonardo. They won’t put you to the stake because of dreams if you don’t go hollering it in the market square.”

Riario drew back and leaned in for a kiss, licked, nipped and suddenly bit into Leonardo’s mouth like a starving predator, tearing his lips to shreds, cracking his jaw bone with his sharp triangular teeth…

Leonardo was woken up by the sound of his own bones breaking. He was having chills, his head was splitting with pain. He drew his knees to his chest and groaned.

“Leo,” Zo’s voice sounded upset. “What’s the matter with you?”

Leonardo wasn’t sure his voice would obey, but suddenly the pain was gone, leaving only a slight ache behind his eye-balls. The cracking faded away, too. Leonardo opened his eyes with difficulty, saw a half-eaten piece of dried bread in Zo’s hand and realized where the sound had come from. Behind Zo’s shoulder Riario stood – disheveled and half-naked, dressed only in a pair of loose linen trousers. Leonardo shuddered.  

“Have you seen a ghost?” Riario enquired grimly.

“My head,” Leonardo answered not to the point. “I guess I’ve caught that cold after all.”

“That’s pretty sad,” Riario pointed out. “Because the clothes dried out a little, but not entirely.”

“I have some herbs. Someone just needs to brew them.”

“I’ll do it.” Zo started blowing the coals. “Count, go fetch some water.”

By the time they went on the road again Leonardo had drunk his herbal brew, eaten a little bit and no longer felt ill.

The dream wasn’t forgotten, but it smoothed out like sharp rocks in the wind. The weather looked promising. It was only a short ride to Florence from here.   
***  
  
The city met them with its familiar motley commotion. Going along the busy streets and repaying multiple salutations, congratulations, amicable digs and shouts “Where have you been?” (slightly diluted with insults and regrets at his return), Leonardo realized he’d missed noisy cheerful Florence. However much could he despise his native city at times, Rome with its mixture of prim quarters and poverty-struck alleys hadn’t been able to win his heart. 

As soon as they crossed the market Riario disappeared on the excuse of some business, so Leonardo and Zo came into the studio together.

Nico, Vanessa and unknown volunteers had done a good job of scraping soot off the beams and the walls and saving what they could. There were also things there which Nico had bought as well as a few things which – Leonardo remembered that now – had been kept in Andrea’s bottega since his apprenticeship. 

Leonardo turned over a glass ball in his hands. Filled with water, this ball intensified and directed light of lamps. Then his attention was caught by a skeleton of a colt, assembled from separate bones.

Leonardo smiled in spite of himself, remembering how maestro had sworn when butchers with small bloody horse corpses had become frequent visitors at his door, and how the fellow apprentices had almost staged a strike because a bone boil had been stinking to high heaven.

But then his smile gave way to sadness. Andrea would never again go with his eternal mug of wine through the crowd of chattering young men, Andrea would never more scold him nor praise him nor listen with understanding to things which someone else would call insanity or heresy…

“Leo,” Zo touched his shoulder. “Quit petting the dead horse, you’ve got a live one.”

Leonardo gave a sigh, left the skeleton alone and looked round the studio again. He was at home and it seemed like old times. Almost.

“Have you figured out what you’re going to do with Riario?” Zo enquired. “If you haven’t I propose that we do it before he returns.”

Leonardo fell on the stool.

“We can’t hide forever. We can’t even hide for a long time. Sixtus is waiting for us and more than that, he knows where we are. We have to get from Riario what connects him to the Labyrinth and what they're up to.”

“It's easy to say,” Zo sighed. “When you decided to rummage through the Secret Archives and we found this asshole in your underwater suit, Nico took it into his head to make him tell us where you were. The kid acted with much vigor even if with far less skill. Still he didn’t succeed.”

“We must admit, though, Riario didn’t really know where I was,” Leonardo pointed out.

“But he behaved as if he knew, just didn’t want to tell us.”

“I suppose it’s useless to torture him for information.” Leonardo remembered those screams in the underground halls and shivered a bit. “Besides, I’m not sure I’d be able to do it…”  
“I would,” Zo said matter-of-factly. “But it seems to me he won’t fess up. Just to annoy me.”

“In principle, we can give him a weak henbane brew.” Leonardo jumped up and started pacing from wall to wall. “It’ll loosen his tongue and take away the memory of what happened. Later we’ll tell him he got sick with something.”

“And how exactly are you going to make him drink a henbane brew without him noticing it?” Zo demanded.  
“Well, first we’ll have to put some sleeping drug into him.” Leonardo stopped at half step. “We can do it like that. Do you remember how we poisoned Vlad’s whole court? Tomorrow we’ll give a lunch in celebration of our return. We’ll invite Nico. Maybe also Vanessa if Lorenzo lets her go. By the way, I need to visit Lorenzo… Now, where was I? Ah. So, I’ll add some slow drug into a dish everyone will eat so that Riario doesn’t get suspicious. Then I’ll distract him and you all will take an antidote.”

“And you?”  
“I…” Leonardo shrugged. “The drug will be in some meat course. Coda alla vaccinara perhaps? More pepper and garlic to disguise the taste. I won’t eat it and no one’s going to be surprised about that.”

“Aw, my gut says the count will end up dead after your heady mix,” Zo shook his head. “Not that I mind it, again, no Riario, no problem… But I worry about our health, too. Don’t you feel sorry for Vanessa?”   
“This sleeping drug is absolutely harmless,” Leonardo was offended. “Actually, taking an antidote isn’t even necessary. But if everyone is asleep, who’ll help me to take Riario away? A henbane brew is most likely to make him delirious, and I suspect it’s going to be… loud. I don’t want to draw the guards’ attention.”

“In your mouth, it sounds pretty convincing,” Zo had to admit. “Although you make any suicidal idea sound convincing. Until it’s time to face consequences.”

“I prefer to call it ‘dealing with one thing at a time’”.

“I bet you do. But if it’s me again who will have to deal with your things, you owe me for emotional toil. You must’ve earned a small fortune in Rome.”

“Okay, okay,” Leonardo agreed easily.

“Where are we going to take him?” Zo asked business-like.

“To Vinci,” Leonardo decided after some thinking. “The house is made of stone, the neighbors are far. Also it’ll take comparatively little time to get there.”

“Okay,” Zo sighed. “Vinci then.”  
***  


“God is laughing at us, da Vinci. Did you ever think we'd see the end together?”

“I never believed that I would be facing an end at all.”

Water prattling and rhythmical drumbeats faded away before he had time to perceive the sounds. Leonardo looked around and found himself not in a spacious stone dungeon, but in a small cell, caked in bat guano.  The cell was clearly designed for one person, but Riario was sitting in front of him – pale, with messy hair, bruised eyes and a nasty cut on the bridge of his nose.  

“God is laughing for His silly lambs mocked at His prohibitions and now it’s His turn.” Riario gave him a mere trace of a smile and pressed the back of his head against the cold wall. “The flesh is weak, Leonardo, and its sin is sweet like ripe grapes. However, these grapes are of the vine of Sodom and of the fields of Gomorrah: their clusters are poisonous.”  
Leonardo rubbed his face, with detached surprise feeling the grown scraggly beard. He knew he was in Bargello. He knew he had been thrown here on the charge of sodomy. But… Riario? What had he got to do with this?

“We… what…” he uttered stumblingly. “We…”

“We drank poison.” Riario was looking at him with those clear serene eyes. “And after one drinks poison he is bound to die even if this poison tastes like sugar and honey.”

“No!” Leonardo bolted to his feet, but the pain in his leg almost made him fall down so he had to brace himself against the bars. “This is not our fate.”  
“Our fate is to be enemies. But you… changed me. Infected me with your enlightened ideas. Made me think it was possible to countermand predestination. One of us is destined to be strong, the other – weak, so that the strong defeats the weak as it always happens.”

“We’re both strong,” Leonardo interrupted him sharply.

It seemed to him he knew how they could get out of here. The thought was lingering in the back of his mind and eluded his grasp like a bird which flew into the room and kept running into its walls and ceiling. Was it something about leaves… and… bats?

“Well, then the strong man hath stumbled against the strong,” Riario gave a hoarse laugh.  “And they are fallen both together.”

“You’re very quick to surrender.”

“And you’re locked,” Riario retorted. “Here.” He gestured around the cell. “And here.” His dirty finger tapped his temple.  
Leonardo didn’t have time for his cellmate’s wallowing nor even for attempts to figure out how they had ended up like that. There were footsteps in the corridor, and Leonardo knew he had to demand that they called his father and then ask him for some leaves, ostensibly for eating. Dammit, which kind of leaves did these have to be? Some special leaves, just any leaves wouldn’t do…

Two guards approached the cell and, without paying attention to Leonardo’s attempts of talking, dragged Riario out. The count didn’t try to resist. Leonardo watched them go out of sight helplessly, but then he noticed that the key had been left in the lock. Without even thinking about the reasons of such negligence, he opened the door, stepped out of his cell, dived into the darkness and…

And then he tumbled up into a bright sunny day, behind multicolored backs of a jubilant crowd. After the darkness of the confinement sunlight hurt his eyes. Blinking and dashing away tears, Leonardo looked around, and realization almost made him swoon: he was in Piazza della Signoria which meant that the agitated crowd in front of him had gathered to watch an execution. He slipped into the heated mass of people like an eel, shoving them and stepping on their feet, receiving jabs in the ribs and fiercely pushing his way with his elbows. However the crowd kept growing and squashing him, and Leonardo was afraid they were going to plain out crush him, but suddenly people parted and he found himself in the forefront.

He stopped in his tracks, gaping. It wasn’t a gallows or a scaffold, a breaking wheel or a stake in front of him. The structure resembled a weird horned crucifix – and to this crucifix Riario was tied.

“Girolamo!”

Leonardo rushed to him and Riario – just as if he’d been waiting for his arrival – slipped down. Staggering a bit, Leonardo caught him and eased the heavy body on the ground carefully. But not in the stomped mix of sand and straw, but in the soggy mud. He looked up and saw that the crowd was no longer here and he was surrounded not with buildings, but with trees rustling in the rain. He could see the entrance to the cave nearby. He had no time for gazing around though. A few moments later it became clear that, regretfully, Riario was dead, but Leonardo kept blindly shaking and feeling him. Failing to find any visible injuries, he figured out how to untangle the ropes around the count’s wrists and saw deep cuts under them.

Riario had bled out even before his body had been tied to that mockery of a cross.

“Who…” he muttered. “Who did it to you?”

“You,” Riario said.

Leonardo recoiled and thwacked down in the mud. Riario stood up with cranky grace either of a puppet in unskillful wire puller’s hands or a body with twisted joints.

“You stripped me of my faith,” he reproached. “You took my purpose from me.”

“No,” Leonardo whispered. “I wanted to give you freedom.”

“You know what happens with a bird that is given freedom?”

“It flies into the wild.”

“Where it dies since it was born and fed in the cage and knew nothing else.”

Riario leaned over him, his eyes became bloodshot and scarlet drops swelled over his lower lids.

“Fly to freedom, Leonardo,” he said. “And then free me. From everything. For ever and ever.”

“No,” Leonardo shook his head. “Don’t say that. Don’t you dare say that!”

The drops of blood fell on his face and burnt his skin with their unearthly cold.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Il prigioniero – the prisoner


	4. L’incubo

“You have a pretty good reaction, artista. The next step would be a whole mug.”

Leonardo moved away from the wall to which he’d darted reflexively. His heart was racing. He dashed away moisture from his face and looked at his wet fingers absent-mindedly.

Just cold water. Of course. What else could it be?

Riario took a sip from the mug whose contents he’d just sprayed Leonardo with. Last night Leonardo had let his guest have the only bed and spent the night on the floor just like Zo had. Riario either had had no time or preferred not to put on his usual black clothes and now – barefoot, wearing trousers and a shirt – he looked almost cozy. 

Leonardo grabbed the count’s free hand and yanked the man toward him. Caught off his guard, Riario dropped to his knees, managing not to spill the water. Not giving him time to recover, Leonardo turned his hand palm up and almost gasped when he saw a quite fresh cut on Riario’s wrist stitched up with a rough thread. The same cut the Minotaur and the crucified body had had. He didn’t even doubt that an identical mark could be found on the count’s other hand.

“Who did this to you?”    
Riario bolted to his feet and tugged his sleeve down to the middle of his palm. He got pale, while pink blotches appeared on his cheeks. But when he answered, his voice remained calm.

“It’s none of your business, da Vinci. You better tell me what’s happening here. You promised we’d pick up some details and come back, but instead you’re sleeping ‘til noon, while young Niccolo and Lorenzo’s new favorite have descended on your place and started such cooking that smoke is everywhere.”

“‘Lorenzo’s new favorite’s’ name is Vanessa and she’s my good friend.” Leonardo got up and stretched himself with gusto. “I’ve found almost everything I need and I worked until late last night perfecting the drawings. Your… uncle will get his weapons, don’t worry about it. Besides, I don’t understand why we have to hurry. Did you give him the list?”

“Yes.”  
“Finding and preparing all materials and instruments, equipping the workshop and hiring people will take more than two days,” Leonardo continued as convincingly as he could. “We’ll depart tomorrow and I’ll be able to start working right off the bat. As for today, we’ve decided to host a little lunch for our closest friends. I was away for quite some time. Besides, we didn’t celebrate our return from the edge of the world, you know? We just never got around to it. Sixtus really cooked our goose.”  
Riario looked a bit guilty at that. He muttered something, finished his water, put on his boots and went downstairs from where the scent of baking and freshly cooked meat was wafting.

Leonardo heaved a sigh of relief: so far, everything was going according to the plan.

When he took a peep into the studio he saw that it looked completely different: the planks of the floor were scraped clean, the working table was cleared and covered with a tablecloth, here and there the beams were decorated with modest field flowers and ribbons. It looked like his friends had forgotten that initially the lunch had been planned solely as a trap for Riario so they’d got down to business in earnest.

“Count,” Vanessa said, “you can have a light snack. Annetta has boiled eggs. No-no, not the small plate, there’s an eyeball in there.”

“There’s _what_ in there?” Dumbfounded, Riario gawped at the contents of the said plate.

“It’s mine,” Leonardo broke in hastily.

“Why do you boil an eyeball in egg?”

“If you boil it in the white of an egg, then later you can cut it into thin pieces to study it,” Leonardo explained.    
“Extremely educational,” Vanessa intervened. “Now put it away before someone eats it mistakenly. I didn’t know where to put it.”

Riario mumbled something not-so-flattering and reached for the other plate. Meanwhile Leonardo got hold of his precious eye and brought it upstairs.

They spent a nice couple of hours, talking and sipping wine while waiting for the lunch. Even Riario and Zo didn’t fight so much. More precisely, as soon as another quarrel was about to happen Leonardo or Nico shunted the conversation on a safer topic. If they failed, Vanessa stopped her cooking to help. She seemed to have managed to charm the inaccessible count.

“Speaking of balls. Zo…”   

“Whoa, you old pervert, we have women and kids here.”

“I’m no longer a child!”

“And women know more about balls than he does.”

“More than Leo? Ooooh, Vanessa, darling, you just don’t know all those things about him which…”

“Dammit, Zo, I mean balls of wool! After we’re back from Rome remind me that I was going to trade three of them for Gino’s wife’s rooster.”

“Why do you need a rooster? Did you finally get sick of eating only grass?”

“I want to perform an experiment. I’ll give it some wine, put it on eggs and see what will hatch out.”

“If this rooster is black then a basilisk will hatch out, I can say it for sure even without an experiment.”

“God have mercy on this den of heretics and sodomites…”

“Count!!!”

Warm dough and spices were exuding such a savory smell it was strange that beggars and dogs hadn’t gathered under the windows. Wine was sparkling, being poured from wickered bellied bottles into mugs. These bottles were lined up along the walls in really formidable numbers.

“…there’s a very curious paradox: people are attracted to variety and randomness in nature, but to symmetry and regularity of features in other people.”

“Hmmm…”   
“Okay, look, Girolamo, if you decide to choose a wife, what will you pay attention to?”

“Well… her wealth, status, the political situation in the country…”

“Yeah, he’s really a good one to ask.”

The women started setting out the table: an oxtail stew, hard-boiled and baked eggs, greens, cheese, bread, more wine.

“Some say mixing pigments with nut oil is better than with linseed one since in the former case paint doesn’t darken…”

“Leo, it’s not something that interests normal people.”

“It seems interesting enough for me.”

“Ah, count, since when do you call yourself a normal person?”

“Zoroaster, I’m going to…”

“Lunch is ready!” Vanessa announced.

“Really, my friends, let’s go eat.” Relieved, Leonardo stood up from the bench where he’d strategically taken the seat between Riario and Zo, and they moved at the table.

Annetta, Vanessa’s maid, began putting meat on the plates. Leonardo covered his plate with his hand quickly and went with cheese, bread and greens.    

“Coda alla vaccinara?” Riario arched his eyebrow.

“We’re hosting a guest from Rome after all,” Vanessa explained. “We decided to cook something from the cuisine of your native city.”

“Oxtails are food of the ignoble,” Riario pointed out, but then he noticed her indignant look and corrected himself hastily, “Some people say so.” He put several pieces of meat into his mouth and closed his eyes. “Hmmm, outstanding. Donna..?”

“You can call me just Vanessa.”

“Vanessa, this meat is gorgeous. I’m sure even onion broth cooked by you will taste better than truffles.”

Vanessa broke into a smile, but apparently Riario kept feeling embarrassed about his own comment – he fixed his eyes on the stew in silence and was eating almost without looking up, with somewhat exaggerated enthusiasm. Which only served Leonardo’s purposes because the others were picking at their food half-heartedly. That could be understood. One would hardly ravenously eat a dish when aware that something had been added to it even if this something was a pretty harmless sleeping drug.

Leonardo wasn’t dishonest when he’d called it harmless. Effects of many drugs didn’t differ much from those of a poison, but he’d experimented a few years ago and by trial and error created a mixture whose effect was reliable, long-lasting and comparatively gentle at the same time.     

Riario livened up slightly only when Annetta served a dessert – a sliced pepper cake.

“Panpepato?” he asked in surprise. “I caught its scent, but I didn’t think… How..?”

“I talked to Zita a bit while we were held captive by Children of the Sun,” Leonardo explained. “She mentioned it was your favorite dessert.”

Either mention of Zita played its role or the wine the count had drunk affected him, but Riario looked entirely confused now.

“I… cannot understand it,” he muttered. “In fact, we’re still enemies…”

“Too sharp a judgment,” Leonardo objected.

“And still you call me to the table with your friends and you have given orders to cook my favorite dish.”

“If thine enemy be hungry, give him bread to eat; and if he be thirsty, give him water to drink,” Leonardo smiled. “Isn’t that what Scripture says?”

“For in doing this thou shalt heap coals of fire upon his head,” Riario snorted. “I should wonder what poison you added to food and drinks.”

Leonardo froze and cast a terrified look at Zo, but almost immediately he realized the count was joking.

Riario took a bit of the cake and smiled.   

“Zita baked it a little differently, this one doesn’t taste the same. But it’s still delicious.”

The different taste could in fact be easily explained. First, according to Vanessa and Annetta, every housewife made this dish in her own way, depending on the amount and sort of chosen honey, nuts and spices. Second, the dessert contained a big dose of the same drug which had been added to the meat. Just to make sure.

“I’m really sorry I should watch my figure,” Vanessa sighed.  

Nico and Leonardo excused themselves on the ground of not having a sweet tooth, and Zo, being his usual self, expressly stated that all these honey cakes were only for women and pampered lordlings. Leonardo gave his friend an angry look, silently asking him not to overdo it. Anyway, Riario got the whole cake to himself.   

“I suggest you all have some more wine,” Leonardo said cheerfully after the lunch was over. “Count, come with me, I want to show you one arguable point of you-know-what before I forgot about it.”

He let Riario go first and with his eyes pointed over his shoulder at the chest in the corner where the pitcher with the antidote was hidden.

Leonardo made Riario stay upstairs for a while – he spread the designs on the floor and was suggesting different options for appearance of the weapons. Perhaps, he got carried away a bit because finally Zo went up the stairs.

“Absorbed in your papers again?” he asked. “Nico said they were playing calcio near Santa Croce today. Let’s go and watch it? You can show your count how real Florentines have fun.”   

“We should’ve gone there earlier, we won’t force our way to the fence,” Leonardo estimated.

“My acquaintance Marco lives just near the basilica. You can see the square from his windows perfectly.”

“We can do it,” Leonardo agreed. “Girolamo, will you join us?”

Riario had nothing against this idea.

On their way to Santa Croce Zo, taking advantage of the fact that Riario had walked away to talk to Nico, whispered, “When is your stuff going to work? Be careful, what if he faints in the middle of the game and falls out of the window?”

“The drug’s slow,” Leonardo whispered back. “He’s supposed to feel sleepy by the evening. He’ll think that’s because of a large meal, booze and being outside. He’ll take a nap and that’s it. He’ll sleep without waking.”

“Will we have enough time to bring him out of the city?”

 “The amount of the sleeping drug he consumed would be enough even for his horse,” Leonardo assured. “We could take him to Naples if we wanted to. Well, I'm exaggerating of course. Have you found a cart?”

“It’s ready and waiting for its precious cargo,” Zo grinned.

“Excellent. We’ll ride out at sunset and be there by the morning.”

Unsurprisingly enough, the place was buzzing with screams and thrill of the competition. Spectators had surrounded the rectangular fenced field in several dense rows, but Marco agreed to let his acquaintance’s friends into his rooms which had a splendid view of the square. Leonardo, Zo and Nico got engrossed in the performance straight away, yelling and cheering on the players.

When after a little while Leonardo looked at Riario, the man was watching the spectacle with dull interest and slight disgust.

“Do I understand it correctly that the object of this kick game of yours is for one team to kill as many people from the other as possible?”       

“Of course not.” Leonardo spluttered with laughter. “The object is to get the ball into the opponents’ goal and to score more goals than the other team. But it’s easier to do if there’re fewer players left in the opponents’ team. Substitutions aren’t allowed.”

Riario sniffed and said nothing for quite a long time. The teams had changed sides a couple of times when he asked again, “What do winners get?”

“A cow,” Leonardo replied absently. “And honor ‘til the next game of course.”

Several tense situations came up in the field at the same time. A great cloud of dust covered everything. Through this dust one could see little motley groups of the players fighting here and there. Even the ball got lost. In many spots the sand was bloody.  

“Barbarians,” Riario said a bit later. “You might as well have rat fights – the same scrimmage, but you won’t have to waste a cow.”

“And you’re a bore,” Leonardo shot back without turning to him.

By the final stage of the game the square was all roaring. In some places outside the fence fights started. Leonardo hung out the window dangerously and was trying to see if a fullback of Reds managed to recover his feet after a heavy blow from a forward of Whites when someone’s hand grabbed him by his trousers and dragged him back into the room.  

   
“I wasn’t about to fall out.” He waved Zo away.

“Bah! Go ahead and fly on your ‘birds’ or out of windows to your heart’s content, I don’t really care,” Zo snorted and added deliberately loudly and cheerfully, “Your count is so fascinated by the game he’s falling asleep. Are you going to take him home or we’re getting him to sleep here in the corner?”

Leonardo instantly forgot about the game and walked up to Riario. The count kept gazing out of the window, but his usually piercing stare became clouded, his eyes started glazing over. Apparently the drug was working faster than he had been planned, however, taking into consideration the fact that Riario had swallowed so much of it…

“Tell me the outcome later.” Leonardo sighed and touched Riario’s sleeve. “I can see that our game isn’t to your liking. Let’s return to the studio.”

Riario didn’t try to refuse even out of politeness. All the way back he was steady on his feet and walked smoothly and surefootedly as usual, but as soon as they were back in the studio he sagged on the bench.

“When Zo and Nico come we’ll sit and have a few more drinks,” Leonardo said brightly. “Until then you can take a nap if you wish.”

Riario looked round the room slowly.

“Where’s… Vanessa?”

It seemed his tongue was moving with some difficulty.

“She’s back in the palace,” Leonardo shrugged. “Yesterday I sweet talked Lorenzo, but he didn’t allow her to stay overnight. Anyway, she wouldn’t leave her baby alone for that long.”

“She’s… good,” Riario managed.

“Oh, I fully agree with you there.”

“In fact… it was… a good… evening,” Riario continued with the spiritless tenacity of a seriously tipsy person.    

Now he was gazing fixedly at Leonardo, and for some reason his eyes looked desperate like a drowning man’s. Leonardo swallowed sudden remorse, but then he wrestled his feelings down and grinned. “The evening isn’t over yet. Meanwhile, would you like to have a lie-down?”

Riario turned and fell on the bench face-up, slowly, with his back straight, like a cut tree.

Leonardo barely managed to put his hand under the back of Riario’s head. Then he brought two covers. A moment later the first one was tucked clumsily under the sleeping man’s form while the other was put over him – his blood flow would slow eventually, cooling the body, and Leonardo’s plan didn’t involve giving Riario a cold. Leonardo firmly believed that the count had fallen asleep so he nearly jumped out of his skin when the voice behind him said perfectly distinctly, “Anyway, your game is stupid.”    

Leonardo took a strained breath and looked back at Riario who’d rolled over.

“Aren’t you sleeping?”

The only response was silence. A few minutes later Riario was definitely fast asleep and didn’t respond to his voice nor pokes nor light pinpricks.    

When Zo and Nico returned – excited and slightly tattered – the sun was drooping to the roofs.

“Talked a bit, fought a bit,” Zo explained to his questioning look. “Reds won by the way.” He saw blanketed Riario and lowered his voice reflexively. “Ready?”

“Out like a light,” Leonardo reported.

The sleeping man’s face got paler, his heartbeat grew slower and quieter, but there was no need to put a feather or a mirror to his nose to make sure he was breathing well – deeply and evenly.

“Can’t he be pretending?” Zo enquired suspiciously.

“I’ve pricked him with a pin a few times. No reaction.”

“Pfff. Your pins are nothing for him.”

Leonardo watched Zo with some concern afraid that his friend was going to check Riario’s reactions by means of a dagger or live coals. However, Zo approached the bench, shoved his hand under the cover and gave Riario a mighty pinch. Nico giggled. Leonardo winced sympathetically.

“That was not necessary at all.”

“I beg to differ. For this he’d kill me even being at the point of death. Indeed, he’s sleeping soundly.”  Zo darted a mocking look at Leonardo. “And what of it? Are you jealous?”

“No,” Leonardo replied flatly. “But if you’ve left a mark you’ll explain its origin to him.” 

“Don’t worry,” Zo reassured him. “I’ll tell him it was your little grabby hands. And now I’ll go and fetch that cart.”  
***  


At sundown the cart went to the city gates. Zo was handling the reins, Prince tied to the board was walking near the cart, pulling out a wisp of hay from time to time.

Leonardo was a little concerned that the stallion would be obstinate without his master, but Prince behaved. He had only pushed blanketed Riario with his nose a few times and neighed quietly while Leonardo and Zo together had been burying the count in the hay.  

“He’s just sleeping,” Leonardo had put a little apple between the soft lips and patted the horse on its nose. “Don’t worry.”

Prince had heaved a loud sigh and followed the cart when it had started moving.

“Halt,” the guard called lazily. “What are you carrying?”

“A sow,” Zo answered, dead-pan.

On the hay Leonardo was sprawled. Along the way he’d messed up his hair, splashed the worst grappa they’d managed to find into his collar and now he stank of it so unbearably that Prince kept turning his face away and snorting.

The guards looked at him and guffawed.

“Drunk as a sow indeed!”

“We’ve had a nice celebration after the game,” Zo explained.

Apparently the guards had had a celebration of their own because they were willing to have fun.

“Hey, da Vinci, are you really a sodomite?” one of them teased.

Leonardo propped himself up on one elbow.

“L-lie dwn ‘ere aaand f-find out.” He slapped the hay near him saucily, then measured the flabbergasted guard with his bleary eye, looked at the other one and shook his head. “Ahhh, n-nah. N-not you. H-he. He’s prrrttier…”

This little performance cost him a couple of hard punches and a cordial wish to fall into some deep stinky hole on the way, but their objective was achieved: the guards neither inspected the cart nor paid much attention to the beautiful pedigreed stallion.

When the city wall disappeared from their sight Zo stopped the horses.

“Dig him out before he suffocates.” 

Riario was still sleeping peacefully. Leonardo brushed away stems of dry grass from the count’s face and gently pushed away Prince when he started to reach for his master again. Dusk arrived and the cart was soon surrounded with darkness, diluted only with a circle of light from the lit lamp. The horses were walking very slowly. Leonardo, leaning against the board, was sketching mindlessly ‘til the drawings started blurring before his eyes after which he pressed himself to Riario, sharing body heat, and fell asleep.       
***  


His waking wasn’t a pleasant one. More specifically, at first Leonardo felt steady warmth and moved closer to its source – breathing, hard, smooth – but then he opened his eyes and recoiled, rolling to the cart board.

“Good Lord.”

“Do you worship the creature more than the Creator?”

“What do you mean?”

Riario was looking at him with his head reclined upon his hand. In his ink-black eyes under the fair eyelashes darkness was heaving.   

“Alas, I’m not Lord.”

“And I don’t worship you.” 

Leonardo could still feel the movement of the cart and the hay was here, but everything around them was veiled with translucent bluish milk-white haze. On either side of the cart gray walls with endless rows of pit-like doors extended. It seemed Zo’s back could be seen in the front of the cart, but it was clear there was no use trying to call him. In the place where Prince should have been something massive and unshapen was moving. It filled Leonardo with irrational fear and he didn’t look that way once again.

“I’m still asleep.”   

“You’re uncommonly astute.”

Leonardo pinched his own forearm surreptitiously. Without effect. Yes, it was naïve of him to think he’d be able to break into reality that easy. So he tried to get the dream under at least some semblance of control.

“If you didn’t decide to tell me something about the Labyrinth, then we have nothing to talk about.”

“Actually, I wasn’t going to talk.” Riario reached and ran his finger over Leonardo’s clavicle.

“Are you starting that again?” Leonardo caught his wrist.   

Instead of snatching his hand away, Riario turned it and squeezed Leonardo’s wrist.

“You’ll never get him in reality. But you still have your dreams. You have me.” 

“Never say never.”

Leonardo didn’t have to call for a dream reader to understand where these double-natured dreams came from. In one dream Riario berated him for sinful intimacy while in the other one he doggedly sought it. Leonardo was torn in two. He was attracted to Riario, not only as to a kindred spirit, but also on far more primitive level. However, he realized he would hardly succeed: Riario was too suspicious, too accustomed to the fact that behind impulses of a soul and a body there were only attempts to hide or get something. And since only a short time ago Leonardo had personally proved the latter conviction…      

“Okay, let’s try it another way,” Riario sighed. “There’re three valuable clues I intend to share with you. Not for free.”

One didn’t have to be a genius to understand where it was going. Leonardo suddenly remembered Andrea calling him a genius and laughed nervously. Rubbing the vein on Leonardo’s wrist with his thumb, Riario was looking at him closely and impassively.

“Are those clues about you and the Labyrinth?” Leonardo inquired.  

“Not exactly. Those clues are about _you_ and the Labyrinth. You’re going to learn everything about me really soon. You poisoned me for this reason, didn’t you?”

Leonardo didn’t hesitate much. That was right. You could do everything in your dream. You could travel through centuries and oceans without leaving your warm bed. You could die and stay intact. You could give in to your curiosity.

And no one would ever know.  

“Okay,” Leonardo breathed out. “What do you want for the first clue?”

Riario let go of his hand and sat up cross-legged, cocking his horned head to the side.

“Strip.”

Leonardo looked unwittingly sideways where Zo’s silhouette could be seen through the haze.

“Come on, Leonardo. He’s not where you are now. And where he is now you’re not doing this.”

“Okay. I'm fine with that, but I’ve used hay as a bed for lovemaking before.” Leonardo felt obligated to put in a word or two. “I must admit it’s not the best option. You find dry grass in the most unsuitable places at the most inappropriate moments.”

Riario rolled his eyes up. Maybe. Because no white glistened in them.

“Better?”

Leonardo looked down and ran his palm over a soft skin which appeared right under him. Now they were sitting not on the dry rustling heap, but on the high pile of motley animal skins. Leonardo recognized a brown bear’s one, a golden lion’s one, and a tawny deer’s one among them, but there were also others which probably belonged to some creatures he had never seen…

“Artista, I understand that they’re more interesting for you than I am, but I’m still here and still waiting.”

“Oh, sorry, I got distracted.”

Leonardo pulled off his boots, shirt and trousers and sat opposite Riario, copying his pose. With some detachment he patted himself on the back for that remark about the hay. Though everything was happening in his dream, otherwise he’d scratch different embarrassing spots of his body for a long time after waking up.

“Good,” Riario said. “The first clue is ‘mirror’.”

Leonardo frowned, but Riario interrupted his speculations before they even started.

“Don’t think, Leonardo. Just memorize it. You will think later.”

Leonardo was puzzled, but he nodded anyway and repeated the word to himself a few times.

“Suppose I memorized it. What do you want for the second clue?”

“Touch me.”

This demand could be interpreted in different ways. More precisely, given the situation, Leonardo had no doubts about what he was expected to do, but he was angry with Riario. He didn’t like it when he was made to do something even if basically he didn’t mind doing it himself. This was a matter of principle.

 _If you wanted something different you’re to blame yourself_ , he said in his thoughts. _You should’ve been more specific_.

So, leaning forward awkwardly, he started stroking Riario in the same way he’d pet a dog or a horse: his head, his neck, his shoulders, watching with fascination the short fur darken bristling against the grain and gleam with silvery color settling back. Riario’s body was exactly the same to the touch as he imagined it (save for the fur of course) – firm, wiry, smooth. It delighted his eye and palms, waking a sense of beauty and other, not so high feelings. However, Leonardo stroked Riario’s rhythmically heaving chest a few times, neglecting the dark nipples vindictively, went down to his stomach and withdrew his hand.    

“Good.” Riario’s voice remained even, but there was light hoarseness on its surface like a thin crust of ice. “The second clue is ‘prisoner’.”

This time Leonardo didn’t make any attempts to think the word over – he just laid it away in his memory.

“So? What do you want for the third clue?”

Riario smiled without showing his teeth.

“You.”

“I can’t say it came as a huge surprise,” Leonardo quipped. “But before we start, may I ask for a little favor?” He waited for a slow nod. “I’d really appreciate it if you don’t eat me at the end, thereby spoiling the heavenly pleasure we will both undoubtedly experience.”

Riario blinked and burst into hoarse laughter.

“I’m serious,” Leonardo confided. “I understand perfectly that I’m going to wake up alive and intact and all, but man can get weakness of a stomach that way. Or, what is worse, weakness of some other body part.”

His remark caused another burst of laughter.

“The one thing which is definitely not threatened by weakness is your amazingly babbling tongue, artista,” Riario pointed out after he finished laughing. “Perhaps I should bite it off and keep it? I like it.”

“Yeah, I noticed,” Leonardo replied acidly, remembering the threat in the Vatican palace. “However, I must warn you that without me it risks losing most of its appeal.”

“All right,” Riario agreed yieldingly. “As you wish.” 

When they reached to each other Leonardo understood very clearly that what was happening wasn’t real. He could feel rocking of the cart and softness of the sagging skins, but it was as if he’d lost the ability to feel touches. He could feel neither Riario’s body nor his own anymore. The sensations seemed to exist on their own, pleasure was coiling inside, not like a tight knot, but rather like a loose spiral of water flow – vague, blurry, divorced from corporality. Through the half-closed black eyes and the bared teeth above his face Leonardo could see the void veiled with bluish-white haze. He couldn’t even figure out if he took Riario or Riario took him because he could feel neither Riario in him nor him in Riario. And still a thick warm wave rose inside slowly, froze at its agonizing peak for a moment or for eternity… And then suddenly Leonardo felt prickly stems under his cheek and something firm pressed against his aching flesh and thus he realized the shackles of the dream were weakening.     
“The third… clue,” he croaked, clinging to slipping remnants of the dream for dear life. “You son of a bitch…”

“It’s around you,” Riario said.

Leonardo raised himself upon his elbow, looked around and almost yelled, noticing a dead body which was hanging over the cart board. The corpse was bent in its back like a broken doll, its upper body laid on the blood-soaked skins while the lower part couldn’t be seen. More than that, its reversed upturned face was very familiar – the man who was looking at Leonardo with his wide open dull eyes was Night Guard Captain Nazzareno Dragonetti  

But that hot wave was already impossible to suppress. When Leonardo woke up, his mind was still paralyzed with the nightmare, but his body sang with pleasure, spilling seed. Growing aware that he kept moving his hips in shallow thrusts, Leonardo made himself stop, after which he moved aside and opened his eyes. Riario was lying on his back, his drawn face blanched with pre-dawn light. Fog blanketed the cart, but it looked nothing like that strange bluish haze from his dream. Zo was whistling some tune under his breath, then he swore and used the reins to whip the horses that seemed to drowse on foot. One of them neighed curtly and huffily, and Prince chimed in immediately.     

Leonardo rolled onto his back, too. He could feel pleasant weariness in his entire body, a wet spot was spreading over the front of his trousers, so Leonardo untucked and straightened his shirt hastily. Gosh… He’d probably humped Riario’s unconscious body. The count didn’t care of course, he was out cold, but if Zo had noticed it he’d make Leonardo’s life unbearable. 

The clues bubbled to the surface in his mind: a mirror, a prisoner… Damned Riario. Why couldn’t he just give away the third word? The situation was tricky enough without his antics.

“You’re such a prick, count,” Leonardo muttered, covering Riario’s face with his hand to check the sleeping man’s breathing. “Even in dreams.”

“Morning!” Zo revived. “Aren’t you willing to work as coachman, signor sleepyhead? We’re almost there. I want to get some rest, too.”

“Sure.” Leonardo heaved a sigh, found his notebook and switched places with Zo. “Just try not to step on Riario.”

“I didn't even think about it. But now I guess I’ll give your offer serious consideration…”    
***  


When Riario started to take deeper breaths and his eyes began moving under the eyelids, presaging upcoming wakening, Leonardo carefully poured the prepared brew down his throat.

He didn’t have to wait long: soon Riario raised his eyelids and gazed at the ceiling vacantly. Leonardo looked at his face. The count’s pupils were blown, edged with thin brown rings of irises, his eyes were glistening wetly, his flushed skin was radiating heat.

“Artista…” Riario wheezed, then tried to swallow and winced. “I’m thirsty…”

“How are you feeling?” Leonardo asked.

Riario didn’t answer. He licked his dry lips and squinted, then mumbled something unintelligible.

“Do you know where you are?”

And again, no answer. Darting his glassy eyes around the room, Riario gave a tug at the rope which bound his hands to the headboard. The tug was weak for now, as if tentative. His face and neck were flushing bright feverish red. His body temperature was rising literally by the minute.

“Girolamo.” Leonardo opened his notebook at the page where he’d copied the horned sign from the dungeons under Rome. “Do you know what it is?”

“I can’t see… can’t see…” Riario started squinting again. “What’s there?”

Leonardo put the notebook very close to his face. Riario made an annoyed noise and choked on air.

“Please… water…”

“Do you remember this sign?”  
Riario shook his head and screwed up his face, after which he suddenly twisted his neck to look past the notebook and gaped on Leonardo as if seeing him for the first time. The grimace of pain on Riario’s face swiftly gave place to a blissful and absolutely insane smile.

“Sky… What the vast sky…” He dropped his head on the folded blanket and his eyes turned inward. “We’re flying… You said… we’d fly…”   

Leonardo shuddered. He remembered almost the same words which had passed another person’s lips – pale, chewed bloody. In his mind’s eye he saw Saint Anthony's Convent and Vanessa, jumping from the roof with a noose around her neck, so clearly as though it’d happened mere moments ago.

“Where on earth is he going to fly?” Zo gave mouth. He’d planted himself strategically in the far corner.   

“One manuscript about witches provides a recipe for some magical ointment which supposedly helps them to fly to a sabbat,” Leonardo explained in a low voice. “There were a lot of poisonous herbs in it and henbane amidst them. Perhaps it’s this herb that makes people feel flying.”

“Just don’t you tell me that after a wreck of another ‘bird’ you decided to try the magic ointment,” Zo whispered with feigned horror.

“The magic ointment doesn’t exist,” Leonardo snorted. “Maybe he just remembered our escape from the Vault of Heaven.”

Riario, who was pretty quiet during their conversation and only muttering something under his breath, tugged at the rope again and groaned.

“Sky… hurts… please some water…”

“Where does it hurt? Is it your leg?”

“My head… eyes… hands… ‘m thirsty please…”

“Your hands.” Leonardo caught the thought. “Why do they hurt?”

Riario stilled. Then, twisting wildly, he pulled his body up on the bed, sat up with difficulty and got motionless again, save for coughing and fast blinking.

“Girolamo?” Leonardo moved closer. “Why do your hands hurt?”

“It’s dark… dark-dark-dark-dark…”

“Girolamo?”

“…dark-dark-dark-dark-dar… SCUM!!!”   
The hoarse scream made Leonardo start back. Riario began straining at the ropes, his face turned crimson as if the bonds were tightening around his throat rather than wrists.

“You whoreson! By the sacred womb I swear I’ll make you pay for it!”

“Pay for what?” Leonardo did his best to speak distinctly and steadily.

Riario struggled in silence for a few more moments, then went limp and breathed out, barely above a whisper, “For my death.”

“You’re not dead,” Leonardo pointed out.   

Riario answered something, but this time only wheezing escaped from his throat. He coughed shallowly a few times and tried to speak, but could only move his lips mutely.

“Leo,” Zo called. “Give him some water. His throat must be like a dry well.”

Leonardo heaved a sigh, splashed a little water on the bottom of a mug and poured it into Riario’s mouth. He thought Riario would ask for more, but the count swallowed noisily, with evident difficulty, and stared in Zo’s direction suspiciously, squinting short-sightedly, as if the room were very dark.

“Who’s there? In the corner?”

“There’s no one,” Leonardo said patiently. “Besides, you’re not dead.”

“But I am,” Riario disagreed with vigor. “Following you, I walked the path of destruction. You lied to me, making me worship false idols.”

 _You stripped me of my faith. You took my purpose from me_.

Leonardo forced the image of the dead body stretched on the perverted semblance of a crucifix out of his mind. Riario closed his eyes, frowning, then opened his eyes again and looked at him plaintively.

“I knocked, but it wasn’t opened to me. I sought redemption, but he rejected me.”

“Who?” Leonardo pricked up his ears.

“Father.”

“Yours? Sixtus?”

“The real Holy Father.”

“So it was you who freed him?”

“I was weak,” Riario replied calmly and almost sensibly. “I made an attempt to get rid of my disgrace… to wash it away with blood and the black waters of the great river… and…”   
“And?” Leonardo urged.

“And I died.”

Leonardo spat an oath under his breath. Their conversation which had seemingly moved off dead center, got back to square one. But Riario kept talking and Leonardo cocked up his ears again.

“Then I rose from the dead.”

“Did the Labyrinth save you?” Leonardo prompted.

“Yes.” Riario darted his eyes to the book laid aside and squinted at the sign. “The Architect and other brothers… They… opened my eyes. It hurt, but in the end I managed to see…”    

“What?”

“The way. The Labyrinth is not a maze of paths. It is the way.”

“To what?”

“Virtue. Faith. Truth.” Riario started panting like a dog. “I beg you… Give me some water...”

“I promise we’ll finish this talk and I’ll let you drink,” Leonardo promised impatiently. “Tell me more.”

“I walked through the Labyrinth. They led me. They’ll lead all the others. Not everyone is able to walk through the Labyrinth. Many will die on the way, but the worthiest will be saved. Those who’re in most need of help rarely ask for it. I didn’t ask and I regret it.” Riario’s voice was getting quieter and more slurred. “But they helped me. We became one. And you… You’re driven by revenge. You’ve moved too close and…” 

“What?” Leonardo leaned over Riario and, getting no answer, shook him by the shoulders. “And what?”

“You’ve moved too close,” Riario whispered. “So I... I must…”

“You must what?” Leonardo barked.

Riario coughed out a few wheezing noises, but the words didn’t come again. Muttering a curse, Leonardo splashed some more water into the mug and poured it into Riario’s mouth. The action wasn’t really careful – however little water the mug contained, Riario choked on the liquid and it took him a while to recover his breath.

“Are you to kill me?” Leonardo asked flatly after the count stopped shaking and snorting.

“Noooo,” Riario drawled with genuine horror. “I must save you.”

“For which read, kill?”

“What is the objective of a labyrinth?” Riario countered.

Leonardo flinched. Beyond the blown black pupils he saw the entirely black blank eyes under the fair cow-like eyelashes.  

“And what do you think?”

“I don’t think, I know it for sure. To reach its center.”

“I have a different opinion.”  
“It’s because you lost your way.” Riario gave a rasping laugh. His eyes on Leonardo grew full of sincere sympathy which was so inadequate for the situation that it sent a chill down Leonardo’s back. “But you will see the way as I did it. I will not let you die. I promise I’ll save you.”

“God save us from such saviors,” Leonardo replied, barely above a whisper.

He understood he would hardly draw more information out of Riario. Everything turned out to be simple: another group of fanatics craving for power and using religion and mysticism half-and-half. Sons of Mithras with a different dressing. The bad news was that they had filled Riario’s head with their nonsense. They had lured him from under Sixtus’s nose like a dog from the yard, tempting him with a fat slice of meat – the promise to bring a new purpose to his life. To make things worse, it looked like he, Leonardo, had managed, unknowingly, to get close on their heels, so they had intended to put the best hound of the Holy Church on his scent. The hound whose trail he was trying to follow himself – right into its sharp-toothed jaws.    

“So are we going to keep following each other on loop?” Leonardo asked tiredly. “Who will… ahem… save whom first?”

He didn’t wait for an answer and Riario clearly failed to understand the question. They got quiet, the only sound which filled the room was heavy hoarse breathing interspersed with attempts of dry swallowing. Then Riario cleared his throat and asked softly, “May I have some water?”

“Sure. You’re going to have plenty of it.” Leonardo heaved a sigh and got from the edge of the bed. “Zo, where did you put that bucket? No, the other one, where I’ve dissolved some charcoal.”

 ***   


Zo returned from the city when it started getting dark.

“Took you a while, didn’t it?” Leonardo grumbled. “The market’s been closed a long time. I thought you’d decided to take that letter to Rome personally. Where have you been all this time?”

“I needed to rest after a sleepless journey and the questionable pleasure of watching you try to pour into that poor bastard three times more water than he could gulp down. You should try yourself as an inquisitor.” Zo threw his bag on the table and spat an oath when something clanked in it unhappily. “By the way, how is he?”

“He continues what I started quite by himself,” Leonardo shrugged. “I’m starting to fear at this rate the well will be empty in no time. It looks like everything he drinks trickles out through his skin.”  

Riario had clearly gotten better by the end of the day: his heart rate had slowed, his pupils had diminished in size, excessive blood had drained from his face, the fever was subsiding. Cold wraps and an enormous amount of water with charcoal mixed in it must have helped him. However, his consciousness remained dulled. Regaining freedom of movement, he wandered around the house, swaying a bit and getting tangled in a sweat-soaked nightshirt, poked around in the corners and repeatedly returned to the bucket to drink.  

“What’s he pottering about with there?” Zo fished a loaf of bread out of his bag, helped himself to a generous piece of it and sat on the table.

“He said he was looking for rats.”

“I haven’t seen any here.”

“Neither have I.” Leonardo joined his friend and started going through the contents of the bag. “But even if there are rats here he won’t find those he’s looking for.”

He took some cheese and slightly wilted bundles of greens out of the bag, grabbed the loaf from Zo and attacked the food.

“Mean born gray rats aren’t suitable for His Lordship? He needs some royal white ones?”

“Owanch,” Leonardo explained, his mouth full.  

“What?”

Leonardo waved him away, chewed diligently for a couple of moments, swallowed and repeated, “I say, orange. With horns.”

Zo shook his head dolefully and feigned a solemn look.

“I’m afraid your brew added up to his already blown top a bit too successfully. Be careful, if you return his ‘nephew’ to the Pope in a state of a total whack-job, you’ll have to flee the country.”

Leonardo gave a jerk with his one shoulder, tearing a twig of parsley into little parts.   

“Mind heals more slowly than a body. I think he’ll mostly recover by tomorrow.”

Meanwhile, Riario completed some mysterious business near the far wall and hobbled to the table, sniffing the air. He was swaying from side to side quite a bit and fixed his eyes on things with some difficulty.

“No-no-no.” Leonardo stuck out his arms in front of him and jumped down on the floor. “We’re not orange rats with horns, and you’re not allowed to eat yet. ”

Riario mumbled something, headed for the bucket again, drank up a handful of water ravenously, after which he fell on the bed and grew still.

“Finally,” Leonardo said with relief. “I suppose we can live in peace ‘til the morning.”

“That’s just it, ‘til the morning,” Zo grumbled. “Listen, Leo, won’t you let me strangle him quietly?”

“Do you think in this case the Pope’s anger will be not so strong as if I returned Riario not in his right mind?”

“It’ll be much easier to make up a plausible explanation for that,” Zo dropped his voice. “You yourself heard what he’d said. He’s going to kill you.”

“To save me,” Leonardo corrected, not even trying to keep doubt from his voice.

Riario sobbed in his sleep, muttered something and, turning onto his side, rolled himself up into a tight ball.     

“Even my _şalvar_ are laughing at you.” Before Leonardo opened his mouth, Zo rolled his eyes up and added, “Yes, I know I don’t wear them, but even non-existing, they’re laughing loudly at you. Save! As if you don’t know that churchmen have their own ideas of salvation. He’ll save you in the same way that brainsick cardinal saved the poor nun. Do you remember? You told me that yourself. He’ll cut your throat and announce triumphantly that he saw how in the very last moments of your life you’d repented and had been saved.”

“You're exaggerating…”

“If you wake up with a second smile right here,” Zo tapped his finger on the front of his neck, “the tombstone I’ll put on your grave will read, ‘Zo told me, but I didn’t listen to him’.”

“Agreed,” Leonardo sighed. “Just leave him alone.”

“We’ll look at his behavior,” Zo answered gruffly, but resignedly. “Really, I wish you’d gotten a dog instead.”

They were silent for a while. Zo was sulking, Leonardo’s eyes were boring holes in Riario’s back under the soaked fabric. He thought he could count all vertebrae on it.

“I’m going to sleep,” Zo stated finally. “Tie him down.”

“I’ll watch,” Leonardo shook his head. “I had enough sleep on the way here. Besides, I have some thinking to do.”

Zo shrugged and receded to the corner where he grumbled, tossed and turned for a long time, but finally the room got quiet, only cicadas were singing behind the walls. Leonardo sat in front of the bed and tried to unscramble everything that had overwhelmed him recently.     
So, the Labyrinth existed. Another secret society. They had proselytized Riario. “It hurt,” Riario said. Apparently, to this process, whatever it was, the screams he’d heard in the dungeons under Vatican related. He’d moved too close. What were those words about? Had they noticed him spying? Or were those words about his assistance in the murder investigation? Probably, the Labyrinth was involved with Cardinal Rodrigo’s death and Riario was supposed to provide cover – he was making sure that search for the killer wouldn’t be crowned with success, and he tried to shift the blame to the real Pope… Whom he himself had freed from that cell in a bout of guilt?

Leonardo’s thoughts changed their course. Riario had returned from the Stone City empty-handed, losing the only, in all likelihood, person he had had a soft spot for. The woman who had truly loved him. He’d killed her with his own hands.

 _For you_ , the part of his mind which still hoped for something whispered.

 _Not for me_ , Leonardo smiled bitterly, _for the Book of Leaves that we thought I’d be able to decipher_.

However, there had been no Book of Leaves on the edge of the world. What Riario had brought from their journey was only bodily pain, spiritual torments and burden of doubts.     

 _You stripped me of my faith. You took my purpose from me_.

 _I wanted to give you freedom_ , Leonardo repeated the same excuses he’d offered in that dream. _I meant well_.

 _Along the road of good intentions you led me to the Belly of Hell_.

 _I thought you were blind_ , Leonardo explained dejectedly. _But it turned out I myself was_ …

 _If a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall into a pit_.  
Riario’s voice sounded so clearly that Leonardo’s whole body flinched and he looked around. Everything was quiet: coals were barely smoldering in the hearth, Zo was snoring gently in the corner, Riario was breathing audibly, sprawling on the bed with his limbs stretched out.

He might have dozed off. Leonardo scrambled to his feet, grimacing when a thousand tiny needles bit into his thigh, splashed some water from the half-empty bucket in his face and returned to his previous spot.

All his life thanks to his unbridled imagination – without mentioning experiments with perception changing substances – reality had been unsteady for Leonardo. He remembered events he wasn’t supposed to remember by reason of too young an age. He’d entered that cave and… something had happened there. And still Leonardo lived in the present, not letting himself get lost in imagined worlds. Now, however, he felt as though he was drowning.         
If you doubt whether it was a dream or not, then it wasn’t a dream? Right?

In those latter days his dreams were constantly haunted by death. Cardinal Rodrigo had died in reality and in that very first vision in which death had also overtaken two strangers (one of them was probably real and alive) and Clarice. However, in reality Clarice’s death was totally different. Cardinal Rodrigo probably had met his death at the hands of the Labyrinth. The physician – if it was him of course – was a member of the Labyrinth. But what did Clarice who had passed away comparatively long ago have to do with the Labyrinth? What did Captain Dragonetti actually have to do with all that? The man was alive for certain, if he weren’t everyone would know that.

Those three clues which confused everything even more. A mirror, a prisoner and something that was ‘around him’. What if… That was it! His dreams about the past events with additions of details which had never happened in reality. In the meadow Vanessa had dazzled him with sun twinkles, catching a sunbeam with her pocket mirror. A mirror. He and Riario had shared a solitary cell in Bargello. A prisoner. Did that mean there was the third dream ahead? Great, really. But how the hell were they connected to the Labyrinth?

“Directly.” Riario spread his hands.

He was sitting on the bed, cross-legged, and in the red dying light of coals his fair fur looked pinkish.

Leonardo bolted to his feet, his heart pounding, and… And then he realized the room was no longer dark and the bed was empty. Like absolutely empty.

He had fallen asleep after all and Riario had disappeared.

Spitting an oath under his breath, Leonardo made sure a sleeping Zo was intact after which he glanced outside. Relief almost overwhelmed him: Riario, his head resting on his knees, was sitting in the grass at the hooves of his horse. Prince was picking at the dark hair on top of his head with his lips.    

“Girolamo, hey,” Leonardo called softly, approaching him. “Why did you get up? Let’s go back to the house lest you get a cold.”

Riario looked up with a start and Leonardo staggered back, meeting his glare. The look on his face was perfectly sane and more than a bit glowering.

Dammit.

Leonardo was grateful he hadn’t followed Zo’s advice and tied Riario up. The count would be infuriated.

“You have exactly one minute, artista,” Riario said, his voice tight with anger, “to explain where I am, what I’m doing here, why I’m almost naked and…”   

“I’m afraid with so many questions I won’t do it within a minute,” Leonardo pointed out conciliatorily.

“I’ll put it in one word.”

Leonardo looked back. Zo was walking towards them from the house, squinting and rubbing his chest. He came to a stop near them and uttered emphatically, “Grappa.”

“What?” Riario blinked.   
“I can put it in two words. Crappy grappa. Or in three words if Your Grace kindly indulge me. Extremely crappy grappa.”

Riario looked blank.

“Here, let’s come back to the house and we’ll explain everything to you.” Leonardo took advantage of this moment of hesitation. “As you quite rightly observed, you’re barely clothed and the dew is cold.”  

Riario got to his feet with a jerk, but swayed immediately and had to steady himself against Prince’s side. Leonardo stepped up to him and caught him by the elbow.

“How are you feeling?”

“Weak. Dizzy. Light’s too bright.”

Back in the room, Riario almost fell on the bed and winced, feeling wet sheets. Then he looked around and frowned.  

“Where are we?”

“In Vinci.”

“In… Vinci? Is that..?”

“Yes,” Leonardo explained in response to his raised eyebrows. “This is the house where I was born.”

“All right,” Riario said slowly. “But what are we doing in Vinci, in the house where you were born, if yesterday we were in your studio in Florence?”

“In fact, the day before yesterday,” Zo edged in helpfully.

“What?!”

“What do you remember?” Leonardo interposed.

“That lunch, your barbarian game, then I dozed off and… And that’s all.” Riario turned to Zo. “We drank wine. Surprisingly decent one I must admit. What grappa are you talking about?”

“The one the drinking of which Leo and I were dissuading you from – in unison, but, alas, without success.”

“Just give me a coherent story!” Riario barked huffily.

“Oh, so more time than just one minute is granted to me?” Zo inquired slyly, got a scathing look in reply and continued, “Okay, I’ll tell you. Nico and I got back from the game you undervalued so much, then we shook you awake and had some more wine. We decided to take a stroll at sunset and wandered into that hedge tavern near…” He snapped his fingers.   

“San Miniato,” Leonardo prompted, saying sorry silently to the old Genarro about whose business Zo was certainly going to say all kinds of horrible things.

“Exactly. The food’s excellent there, but ordering booze is like betting money on cock-fighting. Even worse.” Zo’s voice became distrait. “At least from the cock’s appearance you can see its chances.”

“We’re not talking about cocks,” Riario pointed out grumpily.  

“Exactly. So, back to the booze. You order it once – okay, the second time – pretty lousy, the third time – it’s suitable for poisoning your enemies. We had a drink, than another, and another… And then that cunning old fellow slipped us some grappa.”

“We were so drunk we couldn’t tell it from wine?” Riario inquired incredulously.

“Oh, I don’t know about you, but you underestimate us.” Zo waved him away. “We figured everything out. Besides, not all grappas are equal. I bet that particular grappa wasn’t made of pomace, but rather of donkey’s piss laced with toadstools. I can recall it clearly I told you ‘Don’t drink this crap, count, you’ll regret it.’ But…” he spread his hands, “have you ever listened to me?”

Riario looked at Leonardo suspiciously, but Leonardo shrugged with well-affected pity.

“It’s sad but that’s exactly what happened.”

“Then we started talking about the pastimes we had as kids, and Leo told us how he’d run across the country-side with his uncle Francesco instead of learning to write with his right hand in the right direction, and I told how…”

“I gave you more than a minute, but it doesn’t mean your story can last a week,” Riario said through his teeth.

“Besides, I’m free to write with my any hand in any direction,” Leonardo chimed in.

“Heigh-ho, I got it that no one was going to appreciate my gift for telling a good tale,” Zo sighed. “Okay, in a nutshell. Leo mentioned this house and you got eager to take a look at it. Leo reminded you were hurrying to Rome, but you said if we left right now we wouldn’t arrive too late. We didn’t agree, but you looked very convincing, especially with your dagger and sword. So we hit the road, but you felt bad on the way, we somehow reached this very house where you have been lain sick happily for more than a day and a night. That's the whole story.”

“It sounds like drunken ravings,” Riario said, dumbfounded. “Why would I need to look at the house in Vinci?”

“You know best,” Zo responded brightly. “You and that pig-swill you swallowed. Perhaps you decided to estimate the value of dowry?”

“I beg your pardon?”  
Riario still couldn’t think straight and only this fact retrieved Zo from certain death. Leonardo gave his friend a nasty look, shook his fist at him surreptitiously and made sure to distract Riario.

“What were you doing outside? Were you going to leave? Just like that and you don’t know where?”

“I had to go out.” Riario flushed a bit. “I felt as if I’d drunk a river. And then… I just decided… to sit for a while.”

“If not particularly a river, then a half of the well for sure,” Leonardo sighed. “You were really sick.”

He refrained from focusing on ‘decided to sit for a while’. Riario already looked pretty embarrassed. Apparently, that short trip had required all his strength, so weakness and dizziness hadn’t allowed him to get to the house. He was lucky he’d been able to make it to his horse rather than fainting somewhere in the bushes. 

“We must return right now.” Riario leapt upon his feet, but closed his eyes and sat down hastily again. “Damn…”

“You should stay off your feet for another couple of days,” Leonardo objected. “The poisoning was very serious.”

“The pontiff will think something happened with me and he’ll send soldiers to Florence. Do you and your friends need problems?” Beads of sweat formed on Riario’s pale face again. “Or at least I must send a letter…”

“We sent it yesterday,” Zo reassured him.

“Who wrote it? If the handwriting belongs to a stranger…”

“You. You both wrote it and certified it by your seal.” Zo nodded vigorously in response to Riario’s distrustful look. “That’s it. You know I, too, was extremely surprised by your ability to exercise your polite literature and puke your guts out at the same time, but apparently some hidden talents tend to reveal themselves all of a sudden…”

Riario buried his face in his hands. Leonardo patted him on the back with his one hand sympathetically, shaking his other fist at his friend again. Zo was grinning smugly: it looked like he’d just added another point to the list of his life achievements – ‘managed to put the Captain General of the Holy Roman Church to the blush’. 

They had really made Riario write a letter from dictation the day before. In this letter they had explained the reasons which had ostensibly impelled them to stay in Florence for a little longer. Of course, the process of writing hadn’t been so epic as it’d sounded coming from Zo’s mouth and Riario had struggled with it a lot, but finally they had managed to get a coherent note from the count and Zo had brought the letter to the city when he’d gone there to fetch some groceries.

“Fine,” Riario gave in. “I believe you’re right, artista. I’ll lie down. But first off I’d like to wash myself. I look like a drowned rat.”     

“I think I saw a big tub in the shed.” Leonardo got up. “If it doesn’t leak you can bathe.”

“It’s not necessary,” Riario protested. “I can douse myself from a bucket.”

“So that you drop it on your head?” Leonardo raised his eyebrow. “Are you sure you’re able to lift a bucket now?”

“I can use a mug,” Riario muttered doggedly.

Since these words sounded barely audible, Leonardo concluded he’d obtained the consent to the bath. 

“If you’re going to say ‘Zo, fill it with water’…” Zo informed him louringly.

“Aw, it’s so nice of you to offer some help.” Leonardo paused at the doorway. “If the tub is in good condition, heat some water and pour the hot water into it. Meanwhile, I’ll try to concoct a tonic.”

“I hate you.”

“I’m really happy we’re friends, too.”

“I envy your friendship,” Riario smirked.

“I didn’t give you a whack only because it’s not good to beat the sick and the miserable,” Zo shot back. “Mind you.”

 ***   


The sun was already up and its beams were flowing through a narrow window.

Zo had been swearing loudly all the time he’d been digging the tub out of clatter, dragging it from the corner under the window and dashing from the house to the shed and back, filling the battered, but still sturdy wooden reservoir with hot water. Riario had attempted to help him, but he’d rather held on the bucket than carried it, and Zo had gone a bit easier on him which had been manifested by the mocking ‘Go lie down, you piteous thing’ instead of expected harsh words.

The air was still pretty cool and thin steam was rising above the water.

“Remind me since when I became your maidservant?”

“Probably since after your much-acclaimed tonic I cannot even hold the pitcher properly?”

“It’s not after my tonic, it’s in general. Give it some time to work its magic… Okay, now your hair. No-no, you’re slipping to your side. You better hold on the edges and bend your head, I’ll do it myself.”

When the washing was over one way or another, Riario showed no willingness to leave the tub. He folded his arms on its edge, put his head on them and seemed to doze off. Leonardo decided to let him soak until the water got colder. Drying his hands, he sat on the shabby stool and allowed his eyes linger on the wet olive-tinted shoulder, slowly heaving side and dark hair sticking to the forehead. Riario tucked his legs under him, almost winding himself into a ball, and that was good because like that Leonardo was able to think about merely drawing him (as a slumbering river fairy perhaps?) rather than stripping of his clothes and crawling into that tub, too.

His traitorous imagination took up the last thought immediately. As in reality Leonardo could hear the water, disturbed by two bodies, splash over the tub sides loudly; he could feel the hot sleek skin under his fingers. Riario would probably close his eyes and throw his head back, avoiding a kiss, but doing so, he’d bare his neck, exposing his throat trustingly, and sunlight would flicker in the water drops hanging on his eyelashes…

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

Leonardo flinched and came down to earth almost too literally: the stool under him creaked dangerously. Riario didn’t leave his spot and barely changed his posture, but no trace of sleepiness remained in his dark sunken eyes.

“Perhaps I enjoy what I see?”

Leonardo saw no point in hiding. They were far from Rome, no one could overhear and rat him out, and the count couldn’t be scared away with straightforwardness.

Riario smirked grimly, “You like seeing me weak.”

“I should rather word it differently. I like seeing you naked.”

This statement amused Riario. He snorted jeeringly and angrily and looked up.

“What are you trying to charm out or conceal this time, artista? My warning about your tongue still stands. Are you willing to risk some other body parts?”

By the meaningful look he pointed at the lacing on Leonardo’s pants that felt a bit tight lately. 

“Believe it or not, I’m not trying anything. And I’m apologizing for the last time, I shouldn’t have done that.” Leonardo thought for a moment and added, “But I liked kissing you.”

Riario looked slightly confused, but not shocked. Still he averted his eyes quickly – no righteous anger, no venomous sarcasm. For a minute there was awkward silence. Leonardo was about to propose to finish washing and get back to the house when Riario said suddenly, “I saw your drawing.”

Leonardo froze. It looked like he’d really forgotten to take his notebook from the bed yesterday and it got lost in the sheets. How on earth was he going to explain the Labyrinth symbol on its page?

“Anyone ever told you it isn’t good to go through other people's stuff?” He had no time to think of a smarter answer.

“I didn’t go through your notebook. It was open and I was lying on it. Sorry, I suspect I wet a few pages.” However, there was no particular regret in Riario’s voice. “You have some weird fantasies.”   

Leonardo heaved a sigh of relief. Great, apparently the pages had turned. The only thing he needed was to understand if Riario was talking about the Minotaur whose portraits had beset several pages or…

“Prince looks just like real,” Riario praised.

Or about the sketches which Leonardo had reproduced from his memory after he’d realized the drawings he’d made were a dream just like that equestrian dance.

“And you? Isn’t that a good likeness?”

Riario shrugged.    

“You have some weird fantasies,” he simply repeated.

“I guess when it comes to some things, one can only fantasize,” Leonardo concluded philosophically and got up.

Riario tensed and observed his every step, looking disturbingly like a snake ready to attack. If he made an attempt to bolt to his feet, he would most likely ended up falling down really nastily – he stood quite unsteadily even on the floor, much less on the warped wooden bottom – but Leonardo still gave the tub a wide berth, picked up a wide piece of fabric and tossed it to Riario.     

“I’ll go change the bed and you get out of there and dry off. I only beg you, hold on the edges of the tub and don’t crack your head open.”

“Thank you,” Riario said softly in his back.

“Not at all.”

Leonardo really didn’t think he merited any gratitude. If only for once again not letting Zo deal with all their difficulties and doubts in one fell swoop. Anyway, he’d got most information he needed and now he had to think what to do with it.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> L’incubo – the nightmare  
> Şalvar – Turkish baggy trousers


	5. Il labirinto

Riario’s patience and Leonardo’s convincing were enough for a day and a night. During this time the count’s health had remarkably improved, only fits of dizziness and intolerance to bright light had bothered him from time to time. He had rested in bed obediently, bearing bitter brews and cold compresses patiently, but after a day and a night had passed he announced he was ready for the return trip. At Leonardo’s insistence, he agreed to spend another three days in Florence to fully recuperate, but he refused point-blank to stay in Vinci.

“He’s missing brothels,” Zo deadpanned.

Riario, without leaving his bed, threw a chamber pot at him. Fortunately, it was empty.

They hit the road early in the morning. Riario still had to spend most of the journey in the cart, but entered the city on horseback, relaxed and arrogant as usual.

In spite of the coming curfew, a happy Zo immediately hurried away – and not to his house, judging by the direction.

“He’s missing brothels,” Riario mocked venomously.

Leonardo broke into a laugh and slapped him on the back, and Riario gave him a long unreadable stare before he turned to his horse again.  

      
***

The dawn was breaking. It was drizzling. Mud was squelching under his feet. On either side of him rows of high, higher than a person, stems with long fleshy leaves towered like an impenetrable wall. The air was thick and oppressively warm, loaded with unfamiliar fragrances. And then suddenly this sweet-smelling haze was disrupted by a trickle of familiar yet disturbing smells – ones of sweat and blood. Fury. Fear. Leonardo almost could see them as if they were footprints on wet sand or a thread suspended in midair. He turned around, crushed into the wall of plants and followed the smell like a hound, winding along the tangled passages and paying no attention to wet leaves lashing his shoulders and face. 

In the dim light he initially decided he was looking at a strange beast – some mysterious predator from the animal kingdom of this unknown land full of bright colors and deadly dangers. But then the beast looked up from the prey whose throat it’d been tearing and transformed into a man wearing only a long loincloth. His prey turned out to be human, too. This sight left Leonardo paralyzed with horror. The hunter raised his blood-smeared face towards the louring sky and gave a hoarse wailing shout in which triumph and ecstatic fury were mixed.

Leonardo recognized him.

“Girolamo”.  

Riario was staring at him, panting and licking his lips. His bare skin was covered with stripes of blue and red paint, barely visible through mud and blood.

“You’re still alive,” he said. “…my dreamer. Just look what I’m doing for your dream.”

“Our dream,” Leonardo corrected. “The Book of Leaves will save us all.”

“I’m killing for you.” Riario swayed and bared his teeth. “I’ll kill again. I’ll kill a lot.”

“Not for me. You had killed before we met,” Leonardo objected.

“But I’ve never rued those acts. I knew it was necessary for the greater good. I’ve never questioned orders.” Riario stepped closer, lowering his head a bit like a charging bull. “And then you showed up. You were so… pure, so… luminous. You dropped a grain of doubt into the darkness inside me.”  

“There’s darkness in me, too.” Leonardo moved back inadvertently.

He rued things, too. He’d killed, too. Not with his bare hands, but with weapons created by his mind. The time would come when much more people fell victim to those weapons than Riario could ever claim to his credit.

The rain was increasing. Riario burst out laughing, throwing back his head, then choked and spat out some rain water. With a few steps he approached Leonardo very close, as swiftly as if he’d just sprouted out of fat soil. He cocked his head to the side and looked into Leonardo’s eyes as though craving to see his very soul. He smelt like fresh greenery and raw meat.

“If the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is true darkness?” he asked.

Before Leonardo found the answer it lightened and a white flash hit his eyes painfully after which the rain started coming down heavily like a deafening wall and cloaked Riario and everything.     
***  


“The third dream,” Leonardo mumbled, knocking his forehead against the table slightly. “A hunter? A prey? What’s the name of those plants?”

“Hey, artista, are you delusional or talking in your sleep?”

“Talking to spirits,” Leonardo sighed, squinted at the lamp painfully and righted himself. “Is it already morning? Time to go?”

“It’s still evening, but quite late.” Riario, leaning against the pillar, was looking at him, and Leonardo recognized the same unreadable stare he’d been catching since they’d returned from Vinci. “You’re going to fall off your horse tomorrow.”  

“How come aren’t you sleeping?” Slightly limping because his leg was asleep, Leonardo went to the basin, splashed some water in his face, gathered his hair and wet the back of his neck.

“I’ve been thinking about what you said.”

“Sorry, I’m ready to admit I talk a lot.” Leonardo got back to his chair, but didn’t sit down. “Which of my words are you interested in?”

His drowsiness gave place to alertness. He thought he could see, besides something indeterminate, appraisal in Riario’s eyes. What if he had decided that it was high time to implement the plan of ‘saving’ whatever it meant?

“Let me look at your drawings again,” Riario said.  
Leonardo shrugged and brought him the notebook. Everything about the Labyrinth – sketches of the horned sign, the pages peppered with the clues (including attempts to mix letters and make rebuses) had been removed on their way back and carefully hidden upon arrival. Leonardo had left the Minotaur, though. The hint was pretty subtle for an uninformed person, especially given the fact that all kinds of creatures – both real and not – could be seen in many pages.

Riario thumbed through the notebook, pausing here and there for a moment.

“It’s me,” he said. “Here, too. And here. And here. I’ve already seen those. And… is it also me? But why… God Almighty. You have some weird fantasies.”

“Are you blaming an artist for his fertile imagination?” Leonardo shrugged. “I started drawing you when we first met. Has anyone ever noticed your face is really expressive? I still hope to paint your portrait one day. I can see much in you and I suppose I’ll be able to portray at least some part of it.”

“Maybe one day.” Riario was still looking at the book, but as if through its pages. “Keep in mind that if you see too much I’ll get your eyes poked out.”

“You’re mean.”

“And you’re greedy.” Riario closed the notebook and shook it. “There are dozens of those portraits in here, but you cannot seem to get enough.” 

“You have no idea to what extent,” Leonardo edged in.

Riario, however, continued as if he didn’t hear the remark.

“These drawings… Some of them are only pale images while others are far too accurate. You sliced me into layers in them as if I were a dead body for your ungodly studies. Some beflatter me, others are outright disturbing. I beg to ask you what suggested to you the idea of drawing the Gonfalonier of the Holy Church as a debauched circus performer or, even worse, an infernal horned creature?”

Of course, Leonardo couldn’t answer these questions, besides, it looked like the count was just thinking out loud and didn’t expect any explanations.

“However…” Riario swallowed and put the notebook on the table. “I’m not blind and I can see what unites them.”

“And this is..?”

“Desire.” Riario looked into Leonardo’s eyes fixedly, but Leonardo didn’t look down and the count averted his gaze almost shyly. “On second thought, why shall I – like you, painters – use a pretty covering to conceal sins? _Luxuria_. I can see lust, Leonardo. You want me.”

Leonardo stood up straight and jutted his jaw a bit.

“And I’m not secretive about this.”

“Well, you should be.” Riario was still looking the other way. “For the sin of sodomy cries out to the heavens for vengeance.”  
“Because that’s what your holy church decided?” Leonardo shot back huffily. “The one that condemns art and love worse than murder?”

“Let us not talk about love now, it’s not about it.”

Leonardo who was going to say something else only spread his hands helplessly.

“And not about sin,” Riario added.

“But it’s you who mentioned them in the first place!” Leonardo gave way to his temper.

He expected a burst of anger or that the count would actually turn around and go out, but Riario suddenly went limp and made a helpless gesture of his own.

“All right. I did. Consider it my habit.”

They both fell silent. It looked like Riario either got distracted by something or was collecting his thoughts, but having trouble making up his mind.

“So, you’ve been thinking about what I said,” Leonardo prodded. “And what have you set your mind to?”

“I think…” Riario leaned against the pillar and started removing his boots. “If you want me, then I guess… you can have what you want.”

All thoughts which were buzzing and jumbling in Leonardo’s head disappeared at once as if blown off by the southwest wind, bearer of insanity. He pulled off his boots immediately after which he and Riario took off their shirts simultaneously, mirroring each other. However, when Leonardo’s hand slipped to the lacing of his trousers, Riario’s hand slipped to his dagger. He drew the weapon from its scabbard, and Leonardo lowered his hands slowly.   

“You will get what you want.” There was a smile on Riario’s face now. The weak smile that didn’t reach his eyes and had always made him look like a madman. “If you can.”

Leonardo stepped back. His thoughts returned and started racing even faster than before.

What was that? A cruel joke? Murderous intent? Delayed harmful influence of henbane?

“Don’t look at me like I’m a lunatic,” Riario said. “My mind is clear.”

 _That’s not true. Your mind hasn’t been clear since you killed your mother. And mine never was_.  

“If I have weird fantasies then you have even weirder sense of humor,” Leonardo said warily. “Stop confusing me, Girolamo. If it’s some kind of a joke, just say so. We’ll go to sleep and forget this conversation.”

“I’m not joking,” Riario turned over the dagger in his hand. “I’m not insane nor trying to kill you in some cunning way. I mean solely and exclusively what I’ve said. You want me, so take me if you can.”  
“Are you so used to fighting your way to taking something that you’re not ready to give without a fight?” Leonardo jabbed at him.

Riario’s face remained absolutely impassive. Leonardo looked around. He didn’t see where the count had left his sword and his own was at the far side of the room. Besides, it wasn’t clear what the count had in his mind, but Leonardo definitely wasn’t going to kill or injure his opponent. He should probably have broken some furniture: he would rather need a stick, not a sword.

Leonardo grabbed a few pieces of fabric from the table and wrapped his hands in several layers. No one knew how seriously Riario took this fight which he’d forced himself. Maybe he was just going to brandish his dagger for show, and maybe not. Perhaps Leonardo would have to catch the blade. He valued his hands. Riario didn’t move and Leonardo used the pause to sweep his eyes over the studio, figuring what things he could use to hide behind them and what he could throw at his opponent’s face.

It was true what they said: an unarmed person’s best tactics against a knife-wielding one was escape. But it was exactly what Leonardo didn’t want to do. There was no point trying to mount an offensive while focusing only on ways to escape.  

Riario still remained motionless, and Leonardo realized if he didn’t want them to just stand opposite each other the whole night, he would have to start. Attacking with his bare hands felt like a strange and stupid move. His self-preservation instinct was screaming demanding that he should turn around and flee or at least arm himself with a chair. But a chair was better for defence than attack and Riario wasn’t going to attack: much to Leonardo’s relief he immediately took the entirely defensive position and was keeping the distance carefully as if it were he rather than Leonardo who held a weapon.

They were moving around the studio in circles. A few times Leonardo found himself near his sword, but passed it. From time to time he violated some invisible border and that was when Riario made stabs – slowly and lazily. He reminded Leonardo of that snake from the jungles, it had been huge, much longer than the boa he’d seen in Lorenzo’s palace. Provoked by their own fear, Leonardo’s companions had advanced on her with their swords, and it had tried to slip away into the bushes with only occasional short feigned attacks. 

At this pace they wouldn’t finish ‘til morning.

Breathing out, Leonardo darted to the hand with the dagger, intending to catch it. He did manage to brush his fingers over Riario’s wrist, feeling a rough thread and a raised scar, but somehow it turned out that there was nothing in this hand. A sudden pain stung the bottom of his stomach and Leonardo, recoiling, saw the dagger in his opponent’s left hand. A couple of moments was enough for Riario to place his weapon to his other hand behind his back. There were several drops of blood on the blade.   

Leonardo looked down and saw a red cut below his navel and just above the waist of his pants. It was long, but – Leonardo realized it a panic-filled second later – shallow. Just a harmless scratch.

“Whoa, easy,” he forced a smile. “A bit lower and I’ll hardly be of any use for you tonight.”

“What can I say? Perhaps fate has decreed otherwise.”  
Riario smiled wryly, but there was no mirth in his eyes – only close attention and perhaps some excitement. Looking into Leonardo’s eyes attentively, he carefully gathered the dark drops from the blade with his tongue. Leonardo felt very hot as if he’d gotten into a forge furnace, and he swallowed a prickly lump in his throat with difficulty. Riario laughed and stepped towards him, raising his hands and showing he wasn’t about to attack. Leonardo froze like a marble statue, while Riario approached him, kneeled in front of him and ran his tongue wide over the cut, catching the edges of the split skin.

 _He lied_ , the thought flashed through Leonardo’s mind. _What would that be if not insanity?_

Riario’s hand with the dagger was at quite a decent distance, and he put his free hand on Leonardo’s hip. Leonardo patted the count on the back of his head and clenched his fingers, tagging at the man’s short hair. His hard-on was quick and almost painful. Leonardo wanted to pull his pants down his hips and make that hot tongue move lower, but instead he was just standing and running his fingers convulsively through the sweat-soaked dark hair, fixing his gaze at Riario’s shoulder and not taking his eyes off the dagger in the seemingly relaxed hand.  

Riario blew a tickling puff of air in Leonardo’s navel, turned over the dagger in his fingers and struck from the side, aiming for the liver. However, Leonardo caught his wrist and, pulling the attacking hand aside, pushed him away forcefully, simultaneously recoiling. Riario fell on his back, rolled over his shoulder and gave a laugh.

“Not bad,” he commented.

“You could kill me!” Leonardo said with resentment, trying to recover his breath.

“I can kill you at any moment, artista.”

Leonardo didn’t risk another attack. Apparently, Riario had just suffered from insomnia and decided to have some fun. Well, ‘til the morning then. Probably, once feeling exhausted, they both would be able to get a couple of hours of sleep at dawn.

The tantalizing arousal faded, even if with reluctance, and was replaced by hot anger. Leonardo changed his tactics and started pursuing Riario around the studio vindictively, shielding himself with a chair and avoiding approaching too close. The attempt of going into the offensive threatened the count with possible injures of his wrist and fingers, and on top of it all Leonardo began to shower him with numerous little, not too sharp nor too heavy objects he picked up from the table and the floor.

A lap. Another one. Again. And again.      
Leonardo had been driven Riario in one direction, preventing him from changing it, ‘til he noticed that the count’s gait wasn’t so steady anymore: his lips had got pale, his movements had become jerky, and his gaze on the chair in Leonardo’s hands had started sliding off.

Just like Leonardo himself, Riario was overly self-confident and paid little attention to his body, so he’d accepted this exhausting even if not serious fight only a couple days  later after the severe poisoning.

When Leonardo groped for a little bag with ‘witch flour’ on the table, he’d already known what he was going to do next. He threw a pencil at his opponent while with his left hand he tossed the bag into the cup of the lamp near Riario.

The studio drowned in a bright flash. Though he was ready for this effect, Leonardo went blind for a few moments, but Riario got it worse. Recovering his sight, Leonardo found the man on the floor. Riario still held his dagger, but he was so disoriented by the pain in his eyes and sudden dizziness that Leonardo managed to force apart his fingers on the hilt with little to no resistance.

Their chasing game was over.

Settled down on some blankets in front of the fireplace, Riario recovered soon and gave a laugh, squinting through his wet eyelashes.

“You won. What was that?”

“The pollen of one plant.” Leonardo removed the fabric from his hands and brought some water. “It grows in the north, very far from here. It heals minor skin damage and also may be used for fireworks.”

“Now I understand why I had fireworks in my head.” Riario handed him the mug and lay back on the blankets, trying to gain his breath. “You won.”

“Yes, I’ve heard that,” Leonardo replied. “I hope our horseplay and this sad news didn’t chase away your sleep completely. Go to sleep, Girolamo. I’ll wash this cut and turn in, too.”

He began to stand up, but Riario grabbed him by the waist of the trousers and made Leonardo fall upon him.

“Hey!” 

“I knew you had a short memory, but I couldn’t imagine the scope of this shortness.”

“My memory isn’t short,” Leonardo flared. “I remember everything. Even my babyhood.”

“That’s highly commendable, but apparently couldn’t prevent the reason of our – as you’ve subtly worded it – horseplay from slipping your mind.”

Leonardo heaved a sigh.

“I must admit I didn’t understand it from the very beginning. You don’t want me. Besides, you haven’t recovered from your sickness yet. What exactly are you hoping to achieve? Are you going to vomit on me in the process and let this act become your revenge?”

Riario laughed so hard that Leonardo had to bring him more water. Gurgling and choking, the count took a few sips and put the mug on the floor, still giggling.

“A stab in the back is often expected from me. But no one has ever suspected _such_ wiliness.”

Leonardo smiled. Arousal kept burning his insides, but softly like morning coals under cover of ash. He found out that making the count laugh was a special kind of pleasure.

“I’m a bit dizzy,” Riario confessed. “But I believe if you’re not going to drag me along the floor at the same speed you chased me around this room, no horrible dangers will threaten you.”

He said the word ‘dangers’ in such a funny tone that Leonardo gave a chuckle. Riario, in contrast, became serious and stroked Leonardo’s neck, running his thumb from the edge of his beard to the dip between his clavicles.  

“You are wrong, Leonardo. I… desire you. You should forgive me for this game, it’s just… once, really long ago, I made a promise to myself that I would never lie with a man… without putting up proper resistance.” He was talking slowly, finding his words with difficulty, and Leonardo felt as if someone had dumped a bucket of ice water on the coals inside him. “I didn’t want to resist. But I had to present at least the appearance of it. Just for my own peace of mind.”

Leonardo frowned. The guess flashed through his mind, but refused to sink in.

“You…” he mumbled. “You… You were…”

“No,” Riario said quickly. “But I saw enough in my time for impressions to last for life. Besides, sodomy is still a sin. Do not forget it.”

“Ah, so in such a manner you’re redirecting this sin to me,” Leonardo resented half-heartedly, still pondering over the count’s confession and speculating if he should believe it or not.

“I’m dividing it in half,” Riario responded diplomatically. “Anyway, you’re no stranger to this.”

“Serpent,” Leonardo breathed out, reaching for the lacing of his pants for the second time for the night. “Sin, sin… I remember this is a sin, okay? But I’ll make sure you forget about it and don’t want to repent. If only when you get in the saddle tomorrow.”

“You heretic,” Riario said almost affectionately. “And self-opinionated beyond all measure as usual. Kiss me again.”

Making love to him was… strange. Determined to live up to his promise, Leonardo tried on him all tricks he’d gained from – as he’d called it sometimes half-jestingly half-covertly – ‘other anatomy studies’. Riario responded, clenched his inner muscles around him almost painfully, clung to him with his whole body as if trying to grow in, softly whimpered on the exhales and bit his fist – and still he seemed to be somewhere else. Leonardo felt his own passion as though it was a burning torch falling into a bottomless well – a blazing dot in darkness: no matter how diligently it burned it made no difference to the well. Apparently Riario either had gotten completely lost in new sensations, totally forgetting the source of these sensations, or was brooding over some sort of a heaven-blown lightning obliged to descend upon the unholy sinners at any moment now.  

“Out of the closet,” Leonardo said aloud and yanked Riario to him, making the man get up on his knees.

“W-what?” Riario gasped.

“The divine scourge you’re thinking about.” Leonardo pinched the count’s nipple with his free hand, then moved his palm up and covered his half-open wet mouth. “It’s going to jump out of the closet.”

Riario burst into hysterical laughter, spattering saliva on his palm, while Leonardo bent over and bit his shoulder, hard, feeling the skin break under his teeth. The laughter morphed into a stifled yell. Riario jerked forward, thrusting into Leonardo’s slick fist, then back, forcing his member even deeper, and finally his body arched violently, shaking and shooting hot seed onto Leonardo’s fingers.

Well, that was definitely more fun this way.  

A bit later, exhausted and spent, they were lying on their messy bedding, shoulders almost touching. Leonardo’s head was blank, and he was simply enjoying the emptiness in his thoughts, savoring this infrequent pleasure which even opium smoke couldn’t bestow upon him to the full extent.

“So what did you want?” Riario asked.

“You,” Leonardo answered unthinkingly.

The urge to sleep had left him completely, and Leonardo wondered if he would be able to lie around with his thoughts blissfully blank ‘til the morning or he’d have to get up and find something to do.

“Leonardo, I am not a callow youth.” Riario gave a laugh, rasp and unpleasant. “I’m not asking what it was that your body craved. There are surprisingly few reasons for intercourse: procreation, power or a means to insinuate oneself into someone’s confidence.”

“Well, if you say so…” Leonardo sighed and pushed himself up on one elbow. “What shall we call our firstborn?”

Riario got comically wide-eyed and jerked to the edge of their makeshift bed so violently that almost ended up in the fireplace.

“H-how… W-what… what are you talking about? How come… How on earth could something like that occur to you, you impious thing? You ought to be put to the stake!”

“Calm down.” Leonardo reached and dragged the resisting count to him. “You talk rubbish, then you got peeved at it. I need neither power over you nor any secrets.” He had to admit he’d bent the truth slightly. “The reasons you provided leave only children. I didn’t have plenty of options after all.”  

Riario didn’t answer, just kept sniffing indignantly.

“Go to sleep, okay?” Leonardo realized he wouldn’t be able to just lie quiet, so he sat up. “It looks like excessive thinking is harmful for some particular counts while they’re in bed.”

“For some particular artists any kind of thinking is harmful wherever it happens,” Riario muttered. “These ideas of yours… A firstborn… God help us…”

In spite of his indignation, he fell asleep almost instantly. However as soon as Leonardo cleaned up, got dressed and headed for the secret drawer, intending to pore over deciphering the clues, Riario gasped and propped himself up on one elbow, looking around.

“Aren’t you asleep yet?” Leonardo glanced at him over his shoulder. “Or just awake?”

“Was I asleep? How long? ” Riario’s voice sounded strange.

“A short while.” Leonardo approached the blankets again and sat down next to him. “What’s happened? Do you want some water?”  

“Santa Maria del Fiore,” Riario uttered slowly.

“The Duomo,” Leonardo nodded blankly. “What’s wrong with it?”

“I’ve had a dream that it’s completely empty. Without even the altar. The floor is flooded up to my knees. I’m looking up, but the dome is not there, just the stormy skies instead.”

“The dome itself was built not really long ago,” Leonardo explained. “Brunelleschi. You must’ve heard about him.”

“Of course I have, he died shortly before I was born,” Riario agreed quickly and distractedly. “I’m walking in the water… and… and… and I’m naked and blood’s dribbling down my legs like that wench’s at…” He started to mumble something unintelligible.

Leonardo touched his shoulder. Riario flinched, frowned and added, “The blood was dripping into the water and I was watching pink swirls.”

“Your body is okay,” Leonardo pointed out. “I didn’t do any lasting damage to it.”

“What does my body have to do with that?” Riario snapped suddenly. “I don’t care about my body! If only could you see that look on his face!”

“Whose?”

“The Almighty’s,” Riario whispered.

Leonardo opened his mouth, but only clattered with his teeth without saying a word. What could he possibly say? He could say, “Zo never ceases to repeat that you’re completely insane, and I’m inclined to agree even if vocally I always defend you.” He could say, “I wish I could hang on the square all those idiots who did this to you.” He could say, “Sometimes I want to kill you with my own hands just to stop your fruitless struggles, but I became too attached to you.”

Instead he took Riario’s hand, turned it palm up and commented casually, “You shouldn’t be so careless about your body though. Who stitched it? A girl of three?”

“This…” Riario paused, seemingly almost letting the truth slip, but caught himself in time. “One of the court physicians.”

“You were right. Your physicians are utterly unskillful. These look awful.”

“Thank you,” Riario replied grimly. “Your friend Zoroaster was wrong about my unique gift for paying compliments. You do it great, too.”

Leonardo perked up a bit. That sounded more like the Riario he knew.

“No, my point is though it’s already pretty late, I probably could try to fix the stitches. The scars will still be visible, but not like that.”

“Why bother? Let them stay.”

“Well… they’re unattractive.”

“Not all that’s beautiful is good,” Riario smiled with a corner of his mouth. “I cannot even recall who told me that…”

“Stop juggling with words.” Leonardo ran his finger over the swollen skin. “Besides, it does look a bit inflamed…”

“Just admit that you have nothing to do,” Riario snorted, but didn’t remove his hand.

“Probably.”

“These scars are evidence of my weakness.” Riario got serious again. “I do not mind if a reminder of my stupidity will stay with me for the rest of my life.”

Leonardo forced a smile.

“Trust me, even if I were Hippocrates himself, you would keep enough to look at and back on.”

“Those diseases which medicines do not cure, iron cures; those which iron cannot cure, fire cures; and those which fire cannot cure, are to be reckoned wholly incurable,” Riario cited. “Are you talking about this Hippocrates? You know I’m happy you are not him.”

“Medicine’s made some progress,” Leonardo shrugged. “Even though this progress isn’t as great as desired.”

“Next you’ll be telling me you are better than Hippocrates?” Riario had clearly given up, but still didn’t want to assent so easily. “Who did you practice on, eh, signor _medico_? Stitched up your beloved corpses’ stomachs, didn’t you?”

“I beg to differ,” Leonardo got a bit offended. “I practiced on swine skin and even created a couple of new stitch types.”

“Brilliant. Please use some already known stitches on me and leave the ones you created for swine.”

“Oh, so you agree!”

“Do it, hell with you, otherwise you won’t let this go,” Riario waved him away, then winced and licked dried blood from his own shoulder. “I take it we’re not going to sleep this night?”

“I don’t want to sleep.” Leonardo bolted to his feet and started to clear the table. “I’ll give you some sleeping powder. Very little. Thereby you’ll be able to have some rest.”

“As long as I keep my both hands and wake up in the morning, feel free to do whatever you want,” Riario sighed.

After finishing cleaning Leonardo found the powder, dissolved a pinch of it in water and brought the resulting solution to Riario.

“In one go, it’s bitter.”   

Riario drank it, made a wry face and, obeying Leonardo’s nod, lay stretched on the table.

“God, when I think whom you had here…”

“I had Lorenzo here,” Leonardo smirked. “After you and your henchmen had chased us through the tunnels under the Duomo. By the way, he didn’t complain, as opposed to you.”

“I bet he had more important things to worry about.”

“Speaking of complaints.” Leonardo was running around the studio, collecting necessary materials: he was starting to get really excited about the work at hand. “Tomorrow you’ll go in the cart. At least during the first day. Holding reins will be uncomfortable.”

“Hey!” Riario said indignantly. “Are you doing this on purpose?”

“No, why would I? But a three-day horse ride would be hard for you.”

“I feel perfectly fine.” Then he probably remembered the ending of their chasing game and got slightly embarrassed. “Almost. We’re going to move at a snail's pace.”

“In the letter you wrote we demanded more time. No need to hurry.” Leonardo was sorting needles and threads. “Judging from the absence of the Roman army here Sixtus doesn’t mind.”

Riario got quiet. Leonardo thought he’d fallen asleep, but the count gave voice again.

“I did… want it all… to end.” He swallowed the words slightly and it became clear that the sleep was just round the corner. “But then I met… friends.”

“Hmmm?” Leonardo’s heart started pounding so rapidly he thought he could suffocate. However, he turned his back and let his tone express only vague interest.

“Tell me, Leonardo… If you met people who… showed you the way… with whom… you could be yourself… would you join us… them?”

Leonardo pretended he hadn’t heard the slip of tongue. He threaded a needle and turned to Riario who was lying with his eyes half-closed.

“Of course,” he said. “If by any chance you meet such people, let me know. I will definitely join.”

By the time the stars in the night sky started fading, he’d fixed Riario’s wrists, putting neater stitches on them. Riario would have scars for sure, and quite ugly ones. Probably it would be possible to achieve some improvement via applying aloe and honey, but the effect would be low. In the following years time would show its healing abilities, but the marks would remain forever. Not only on skin.

Leonardo started pacing about the studio like a lion in the backyard of Palazzo Vecchio. Work was a good thing. When you had work you didn’t have unwanted thoughts. He swept his eyes over the body on the table, then darted to his notebook and flipped through it feverishly ‘til he opened the list of questions that was added to much faster than answers appeared.  

  
Where does urine come from?

Why does man need perspiration?

Why are tears salty?

What is sneezing?

What is yawning?

Why does man need shivering?

What causes falling sickness?

What is a soul?

Where does seed come from?

He approached Riario again and shivered: for a moment he imagined just another cold dead body on his table. But pressing his ear against the firm chest, he felt warmth of the skin and heard steady thumping. He wanted more. He wanted to see a living heart beating. Blood flowing through veins. He wanted to learn how this whole wonderful clockwork ran when it wasn’t broken irreparably due to an illness, injures or old age. But for now he had to be satisfied with what little he had.

Work was a good thing.

  
***

It was already light when Leonardo heard a quick and quiet knock on the door. He opened it and stepped back, letting his friend into the room.

“Morning,” Zo greeted brightly. “I’ll come in for a while? You see I had a disagreement with Dragonetti and don’t want to come across the patrol.”

“No problem,” Leonardo shrugged. “The wine is there, in the corner.”

“Your hospitality knows no boundaries. And why in the cor... Ah,” he noticed the table was taken. “A new dead body? Now I see why you’re bespattered with blood…” 

Leonardo snorted crossly and untucked his shirt. The blood from the cut had soaked the edge of his trousers and dried, and he hadn’t thought of changing.

At the same time – quite belatedly – Leonardo speculated if he should have fetched something to throw over Riario’s naked body, but then he decided that in his current state the count didn’t care anyway.

“Why didn’t you tell me you needed a body? I saw a fresh grave in…” Zo headed for the targeted pitcher nonchalantly, but halfway there he froze for a moment and rushed back. “Wait, is it Riario? Is he de…”

“No,” Leonardo almost gave a laugh at the sight of his bewildered friend. “He’s sleeping.”

Zo removed a piece of folded canvas from the top part of Riario’s face and looked into his half-open eyes.

“His eyes are moving. Is he awake?”  

“I just told you, he’s sleeping,” Leonardo repeated. “It’s because his sleep isn’t very deep.”

“If he’s just sleeping, why is he doing it here and like that? Why is there blood on you? And…” Zo put the fabric back. “What exactly have you been doing here?”

“Well… Right now I’m working.”

It wasn’t like he and Zo kept many secrets from each other, but Leonardo didn’t really relish the prospect of telling him everything in detail.

“If my memory doesn't fail me, and it doesn’t, you usually dig in dead bodies.”

“In dead bodies all processes stop. I don’t even mention rigor mortis and decomposition. Anyway he’s sleeping and feeling nothing, and I needed to find something to focus on ‘til the morning.”

Really, these arguments, when said out aloud, sounded vaguely wrong. Everything had been much simpler in his head.

Apparently, Zo felt the same way because he shifted his gaze from the ruined bedding to the teeth mark on Riario’s shoulder which already looked bruised, then sniffed the air and rubbed his forehead.    
“Correct me if I misunderstood something. You and Riario played horses and mares, then you put him to sleep and now… ahem… working. Where I’m wrong?”

“Nowhere,” Leonardo admitted. “But it sounds strange when you say it.”

“Strange?” Zo asked. “Strange? It’s not only when I say it, my friend, it’s just really… strange, for want of a better word.”

“I can’t understand why you’ve got into such a fuss. You yourself are always striving to kill him.”

“Killing,” Zo raised his index finger, “is simple and clear. People do this all the time. And what you’re doing is kinda freaky.”

“He’s sleeping and feeling nothing,” Leonardo repeated for lack of better arguments.

“We must be thankful for small mercies.” Zo finally got to the pitcher and had a pull right out of it. “You know I have a confession to make to you. When I was young and stupid I considered falling for your charms.”

Leonardo raised his eyebrows.

“I’m flattered.”

“Yeah. But later I changed my mind, and now I can see I was perfectly right. You’re a genius of an artist and an unrivalled inventor, but at the same time quite a lousy friend and as a lover you’re,” Zo pointed at Riario with his chin, “outright _horrifying_. Remind me not to quaff myself into insensibility in your presence because I’m afraid you may decide that I sleep and feel nothing, either.”

“Since you’re not my lover I reckon you don’t have to worry about it,” Leonardo snorted. “You better listen to some news. We’ve talked a bit…”

“They talked,” Zo confided to the pitcher. “Did you two have nothing to occupy your mouths?”

“Zo, stop it, I’m serious!” Leonardo winced. “He mentioned the Labyrinth in passing. They aren’t going to kill me. They want to recruit me.”

“Heh.” Zo became more serious instantly. “Everyone wants Leonardo da Vinci. So what do you intend to do about it?”

“I’m thinking to accept their invitation.”

“What???”

“No, look. What else can I do? Information is power. I’ll get the information and figure out how to undermine their activity from within.”

“You… you… you…” Losing control for a second, Zo threw his hands in the air, so a thin fountain of wine erupted from the pitcher and splashed against the floor loudly.

For some reason this sound seemed deafening as a thunder-clap.

“You know, to hell with you,” Zo said in the silence which followed. “If you want to trot to the pit right after your count, I won't be sorry to see the back of you. And I’m absolutely not going to get your sorry asses out of there.”

Leonardo wanted to object, convince him, muster some arguments, but suddenly he heard a voice behind him.

“So you will come with me, Leonardo? You will become one with us?”

Leonardo turned around sharply and was stunned to see Riario. The count was sitting on the table, his ribcage torn open, and Leonardo could see the living heart pulsating in its wet dark red depth.

“What’s that? How? I didn’t do it!”

“But you did want to see that, didn’t you? Then _open your eyes and see_.”

The studio drowned in a bright flash, and Leonardo covered his eyes with a soft cry. When he lifted his aching eyelids and looked around he found himself in the familiar hall with doors. Riario stood in a pillar of white light flowing from the hole in the ceiling – a chiseled horned silhouette leaning on a labrys that looked just like the one Carlo had killed Andrea with.

“Have you deciphered my third clue?” he asked calmly.

Leonardo sat down on the floor. He was completely lost. He was sleeping right now, obviously. But what had happened in the studio?

“Leonardo?”

“N-no.”

“It is still around you. Always around you.”

Leonardo looked around slowly. He remembered the mazy paths among the high stems of the outlandish plants. The grey walls with doors that could be seen through the haze surrounding the cart.

“A labyrinth,” he said. “A mirror. A prisoner. A labyrinth.”

“Probably it will make things easier for you.”

Leonardo looked up. Riario handed him a pocket mirror, very similar to the one Vanessa had played with in that dream. Or maybe the same.

The clear glass reflected his drawn face and his wide, bloodshot and totally wild eyes.

“It’s me,” he gasped. “Not a mirror. Me.”

Riario flexed his muscles, picked the labrys up and put it on his shoulder.

I. Prisoner. Labyrinth.

I am a prisoner of the Labyrinth.

No.

“No!” Leonardo started to his feet. “That’s not true! I can leave this place any time!”

“Then leave, artista.” Riario smiled slowly, showing his sharp teeth.

“I’m not leaving without you. I’ve told you that.”

“And I’ve told you that I’m staying. I belong to the Labyrinth.”

“I’m not leaving alone,” Leonardo repeated.

“No, you will leave.” Riario removed the labrys from his shoulder. “Alone. And fast. Before I catch you.”

For some reason Leonardo realized immediately that – in contrast to their chasing game in the studio – Riario wasn’t about playing nice. He remembered that dream in which a black figure with a skull face had cut his chest open with exactly the same battle axe. Even in a dream it had hurt a lot.

A scarlet thread was glowing in semidarkness and led into one of many doors. At the border where torch light diffused there was a dead body. Springing over the corpse, Leonardo recognized its face – under his feet the body of Pope Sixtus IV was sprawled.

Hearing the sounds of stamping and heavy breathing behind his back, Leonardo darted down a long corridor, slammed at a door with his entire body and…   

And stumbled out of the corridor, rubbing his aching shoulder.

It was a little dark and dusty inside. The place smelled like water, spices and a slaughter-house. There were dark streaks of blood on the floor in front of the stairs. On the marble surface of the arch shimmers were dancing. Under this arch a bald man with a wound in his stomach sat cross-legged.

He’d been here before. In this Roman bath-house.

Leonardo passed the corpse slowly and approached the door. The door was cracked open, but the curtain was closed. Leonardo could hear voices behind it.

“Another incidental victim?”

“Oh no. Too personal, too brutal. Clarice inflicted them.”

“These are some… exotic entertainments for the Mother of Florence. Why murder a Roman physician?”

“It’s not an entertainment and not just a murder, it’s torture. Perhaps… he was in league with Carlo… She was seeking information…”

He recognized Riario’s voice. What was worse, he recognized his own voice.

“I told you! I told you… told you… She would do anything for Florence!”

How on earth was that possible? What was going on?

“‘And now I find myself in Rome on a desperate mission to rectify my sins’.”

Leonardo glanced behind the curtain and saw himself – dirty, in rags, with his thigh bandaged. He was standing near the desk and reading, fully absorbed in his task and ignoring everything else. Ignoring Riario who was approaching with a dagger in his hand.  
Riario. It was him. From the very beginning it was him.

“Poor Clarice… Caught in a web of her own making…”

He thought Riario was a prisoner of the Labyrinth, but it turned out he himself had been the prisoner the whole time.

Riario took a short swing and hit the man near the desk over the head with a hilt of the dagger, and then everything went dark.  
***  


 “We are the horns of the increate, we are the shadows at the center of the Labyrinth, but we are men, not gods, we are one.”

The pain which shot through his eyes was so severe he felt as if someone pierced his eye sockets with two red-hot pokers. His head was about to burst like an overripe pomegranate, belts compressed his chest, his thigh ached and throbbed, but this pain was nothing compared with the one that seemed to reach his very brain.

“How many of us occupy this chamber? How many of us occupy this chamber?”

Someone whom he couldn’t see kept repeating the same phrases again and again: one moment it was just a quiet rapid sequence of words, and then the man raised his voice and almost shouted. Leonardo didn’t understand where he was and what they wanted from him: the pain flooded his mind like a swollen river.

“We are only the shadows at the center of the Labyrinth, we are men, not gods, we are only the shadows at the center of the Labyrinth, we are men, not gods, we are one. How many of us occupy this chamber?”

Leonardo screamed.  
  
***

_Open your eyes and see._

He opened his eyes and saw darkness. But at the same time he felt sunlight and cool wind on his skin, he heard birds singing and horses snorting. Then someone tried to lift him from the side.

“Damn, count, need some help here.” 

He started collapsing, but was promptly caught from the other side.

“Zo? Girolamo?” He began to feel about blindly, getting his fingers tangled in hair – wild curls to his right and straight silky locks to his left.

“Leo? Are you awake? Dammit, stop it, you’re going to yank out all my hair!”

“Zo? Is that you? You haven’t left me?”  
“Fat chance. As soon as you’re left alone for two days you get so massively scre… into trouble.”

Barely moving his legs, Leonardo followed where he was led and collapsed on a bale of hay with relief. His eyes and thigh hurt. He raised his hand to his face and felt a blindfold.

“Do not remove it yet, artista. Sunlight will be very unpleasant to you.”

“Girolamo,” he turned his head at the voice. “You did save me.”

Riario didn’t answer, then Zo urged the horses to move ahead, and the cart started trundling along a bumpy forest road.  



	6. Epilogue

Cardinal Rodrigo was dead. Clarice was dead. The bath-house proprietor and the physician were dead. Captain Dragonetti was dead. The Ottomans were threatening Italian cities, Sixtus was demanding weapons and men for his Crusade, and Leonardo was sitting on the floor and thinking that Zo from the dream inflicted by Labyrinth’s poison would probably burst his sides with laughing. At that remark about the studio and the chains.

He ran his fingers over the raised scars stitched up with a rough thread and wrapped Riario’s wrists with strips of fabric to prevent the heavy shackles from chafing the damaged skin. Riario, still mostly unconscious, was sobbing angrily and waggling his head, shaking white dust out of his matted hair.  

The Time River had caught Leonardo in an occasional whirlpool, spun and spat him out, after which it continued carrying its waters forth smoothly as ever.  Its current never went on a loop. It never granted any rights to prevent mistakes. However it gave the chance to correct the mistakes that had been already made. 

Leonardo was still eager to know what was next.

“You mentioned that the objective of a labyrinth was to reach its center,” he said. “But you’ve already been there. Now let’s try it my way. I think the objective of a labyrinth is to find a way out.”

Riario lifted his head and looked at Leonardo with his blank bloodshot eyes.

“But in the very end you saved me,” Leonardo told him. “So now I will save you.”

The cloudy eyes were quickly recovering focus. Riario tagged at the chains attached to the metal band around his waist and looked around, clearly confused.  

“Have you lost your mind?” he asked.

“That's the first lucid thing you've said for hours.” Leonardo got up and retreated to the table.

Riario scrambled to his feet shakily and, restraining his temper, said through his teeth, “Release. Me. Immediately.”

“I can’t do that.” Leonardo spread his hands. “It's for your own safety. And the safety of the city.”  
He wanted more. He wanted to heal Riario’s body. He wanted to heal Riario’s mind. He wanted to obliterate all bad things and create a new story. But the Time River kept flowing and that meant he would have to be satisfied with what little he could do. With the chance to rectify at least something.

“But I’m working on the antidote, Girolamo. I will heal you.”   


THE END


End file.
